Long I Lay In The Ground
by syrrah
Summary: Bella and Alice have been companions for two hundered years, but one night Alice meets a beautiful boy and her devotion to Bella is severely tested... This is very dark, and the M rating is for adult themes and sexual behavior
1. Chapter 1

**Les Femmes Noires One-Shot Contest**

**Title: Long I Lay In The Ground**

**Your pen name: Astranza**

**Characters: Bella, Alice, Jasper**

**Disclaimer: Characters property of Stephenie Meyer.**

**To see other entries in Les Femmes Noires Contest, please visit the C2 page:**

**(dot)net/community/Les_Femmes_Noires/73127/**

**Long I Lay In The Ground**

_Long I lay in the ground asleep, long I lay in the ground_

_Asleep I lay in earth's close hold as she danced spinning round_

_Sister mine beside in dirt enclosed as deep as I_

_Soil for coffin lids and sides; no moon nor sun nor sky_

Long I lay in the ground, dreaming. The only way I can dream is through a kind of sensory deprivation although I didn't know this until it happened. I am in absolute and heavy black, comforting. I can feel a little, and smell and see nothing. It is good, and has suited me.

Long I lay in the ground, remembering. My palaces and the ages that I ruled, the glory and the gold and the grandness, the way I was worshipped. Orgies that lasted for days, when I would kill everyone in sight, would seek out every heartbeat and take the blood and stop the pulse. It was an honor to suffer death at my mouth - the young heroes would line up for it, presenting themselves, hoping to be chosen. I turned some away for their lack of worth, and they slunk back to sink onto their own daggers, unable to bear the shame.

Long I lay in the ground, listening. I hear everything but I couldn't understand the new noises after many decades of slumber, and knew my time was coming soon. Coming again. Time to rise and elevate the sublime, and ensure that all the world would know my name and love me, as all the world had known and loved me before.

Long I lay in the ground, waking, my sister beside me. She is not my sister, she is but a poor fool but I made her to be my companion and her loyalty is unswerving. She performs tasks necessary to me, and sees to it that I am fed and clothed and amused, she prepares the way for me and deals with what humans we may need to deal with from time to time. She reminds them that I am their Lady and that to please me is to die in ecstasy, because I am the bestower of beautiful death.

I clawed my way up through solid rock, always the stronger, reaching as I went for Al-ys and pulling her with me. We were on a hillside on a silent night, stars winking overhead and the smell of trees heavy in the air. Al-ys had brought me here a hundred years ago, to rest. We are ageless, yet we rest.

I rested still while Al-ys went to the city nestled at the mountain's base. I needed to get used to air again and used to the movement of my limbs. She returned after two cycles of the sun, and she was attired in outlandish garb - trousers, such as men wore! Tight they were, clinging to her fine slim legs, and she had lopped her hair at the neck in such a way that instead of hanging, it flicked up and outwards.

"This is the fashion of the moment?" I asked her. "Men's clothes and strange hair?"

"Men's clothes for women, yes. The hair I did on a whim. We have plenty of money, mistress, I have secured us a place to stay, and I have found where we might go this evening to feed. Things are different now, we will need to be cautious at first."

Things are always different when we arise from the ground. That is part of the reason for our periods of withdrawal. I do not enjoy gradual change, I like to be startled by it.

"Mistress, you will be pleased, for there is music and dancing and laughter, and young men of beauty. I have found places where the young congregate and the air is rich and full with their enticing scent - it is lovely here!"

And we are happy, at first. Al-ys has found us rooms which are opulent, and while not palatial, they are adequate. I am very wealthy as I have always been gifted by slaves and admirers with gold and jewelry, and Al-ys trades these whenever we need money. On one hand alone I have rings worth enough money to buy this country. There is a bizarre invention called the television which we look at all day, to educate ourselves about the modern environment and to practice speaking in the parlance. I find it hard to believe mankind has sunk into a sort of deliberate stupidity I never witnessed before, but apparently that is what has happened. We also investigate the internet, and I see with relief that there is still poetry and art and literature, although surely not nearly enough to stop the descent into meaninglessness. At night we go to the places Al-ys recommends and enjoy thumping, pounding music that excites the heart and speeds blood flow. I feed in the way I always have, and Al-ys takes the bodies once I have finished with them, she has her share and then hides them so as not to leave a trail pointing to us. Apparently these days killing people is illegal. Back in the days of palaces and orgies I set my own law, and to receive death at my touch was an honor.

These days, amongst the many things that are different, something else is apparent. There is much more mingling of men and women than we are used to. I don't feed on women, but I love to watch them, and Al-ys and I sit in dark recesses of these clubs, and observe the interplay between the sexes. I slowly become aware that Al-ys is feeling a curiosity when she sees couples show intensity towards one another, and she hisses and leans forwards, eyes bright, when she witnesses certain kinds of touching. I kill by a type of kissing, so she has seen plenty of it, but when these people kiss one another on their mouths, Al-ys begins to look longing. She watches intently as hands slip along sides and hips and thighs, and the boys and the girls press themselves together.

"Is this something you would like to try?" I ask her one night, my voice carrying easily despite the volume of the music, because she and I hear so well.

"Yes, mistress, forgive me," she whispers.

"There is nothing to forgive. Why should I mind? Please - go and amuse yourself and come back and tell me if it has been pleasurable," I tell her.

Al-ys moves off away from me, a sylph in black, more graceful by far than the humans who appear lumpen next to her. She begins to dance and men turn to watch her, and in no time several are attempting to gain her attention. No doubt some offer to buy her drinks, as we have seen that is part of the courtship ritual, but my Al-ys doesn't drink. Not something that comes in a glass anyway. She selects a skinny boy - they all seem to be skinny - I have heard they take powder that stops them eating and keeps them awake all night. I have fed on boys who've had this powder, it's quite pleasant and makes my mouth tingle. Al-ys and her boy find a table and sit down to talk. I don't know how long it will be before the touching begins, and I hope she enjoys it, and it is what she has been hoping for.

After a while I see the boy has reached out a hand and stroked her cheek tenderly, then he moves his hand to the back of her head and pulls her closer so that he can speak directly in her ear. She smiles with what looks like sheer delight. His other hand reaches for her knee under the table, and begins to slide up her thigh. She is not so delighted, perhaps a little taken aback, and I wonder if I should go and pull his arm out of its socket, but Al-ys is nearly as strong as I am and she could more than hurt him if she wanted to. I shouldn't interfere. Besides, maybe it is just the unfamiliarity causing her expression. He stands then, his hand reaching for hers, and she goes with him willingly. I have been witness to the sexual act many times, and when it takes place standing up in a dark alley it doesn't appear to take very long. I assume that this will be what they are doing, and I'll give them ten minutes before I go and check on her.

After ten minutes I go outside to the rear of the building to find Al-ys distressed and the boy at her feet, his neck bent at entirely the wrong angle and his ribcage crushed.

"I didn't mean to..." Al-ys says to me, eyes huge. "I was just trying to get closer, but he was so _fragile_! I didn't want to kill him!"

He's not even any good to eat in the state he's in, as his heart must have been punctured by his splintering ribs, and he died immediately. The blood isn't pulsing out.

"I'm sorry, boy!" Al-ys whimpers to him, picking him up.

"Next time be more careful," I suggest, and she nods, taking the body to wherever she takes them.

Al-ys selects someone else a couple of nights later and this time she doesn't go outside with him, she just teases and smiles and talks and shimmies around him, and by the time we go home she hasn't let him touch her at all.

"Are you playing a game?" I ask her smiling. "Cat and mouse?"

"No," she answers. "I'm just taking it slowly so I don't get so carried away."

She meets the same boy again night after night and each time she comes back to me a bit wilder and a bit more subdued. He is a pretty thing, a little unusual. Eyes, nose and mouth all too big for his fine face, and hair a blond tangle falling into his shirt collar. He is very tall and bends over her tenderly, smiling. She basks in him, though they are still not touching.

"Mistress, I want him," she says after a week of it.

"I know you do. So have him," I nod. "Just remember not to break him in half beforehand."

She pauses, her lovely lashes sweeping to her cheeks then brow-wards again as she swallows. "I mean I _want_ him. I want him to be mine. He and I are meant to belong to each other, I know it. I want you to do to him what you did to me, so that he will be my companion."

"Al-ys!" I exclaim, shocked and angry. "You are mine! _I_ am your companion! Entertain yourself with this trifle, and then we will feed on him, or we can spare his life if you are really that fond of him. But you cannot give yourself in eternity to some mere boy! I forbid it. I will not grant your request, and we will leave this place. Forget your foolish whim."

"Mistress, I have served you faithfully. I beg you to give him to me," she pleads, little fingers on my arm, eyes imploring. "I will not leave unless he is with us. I do not want to be without him."

My angel has never had a mutinous thought as far as I know. I am nonplussed that she could harbor such strong feelings for this ghastly, bony human when I gave her life everlasting, a bounty of wealth, the chance to wander the world and experience everything it has to offer in art and culture, and all the while asking for nothing but loyalty. So this little boy will touch her and kiss her and then fuck her, which is something I can't do. Is that all she wants? Any of them would fuck her, she doesn't have to ask this preposterous thing of me.

"Let me think about it," I murmur and retire to my room.

Alone, I pace, fretting. Will Al-ys leave me? What is the depth of her attraction to this boy? Her attachment? I am perturbed that she claims they are meant to be together. When I changed Al-ys she was a rambling incoherent, locked in an asylum by fearful people who mistrusted her words. She was thought a witch, the tool of Darkness but I heard her crooning song and knew her to be blessed rather than cursed, and I made her mine. We have been content in our odd and perfect love, until now. What am I to do about her wretched infatuation?

She has served me faithfully, it's true. Her devotion has never wavered. She has been enough for me, but it seems that I am not enough for her. All right. I love her so much, I don't know if she knows it. My mad little protege, my quirky jester. I will do what she wants. If there is hurt ever in her eyes I do not want to have been the cause of it.

"Tonight, Al-ys," I tell her, returning to the large shared room of our suite where she has been anxiously awaiting me. Her gratitude is endearing. "Mistress, mistress," she purrs, winding herself around me like a sinuous cat.

At night we return to the club where she has been engaging in trysts with her sweetheart. Their eyes react to one another, pupils enlarging and they both give off the scent of want. His arm curves around her shoulders to pull her lightly to him, his hand holds hers and lifts it to his mouth and happiness envelopes both of them. I am glad, for he has a terrible shock coming.

Al-ys tugs his hand lightly, eying me, and draws him towards the back door and the dark, dark alley beyond.

"Jasper, this is my - friend, Bel'aa," she tells him in a breathy whisper, leading him to a corner.

"Why is she coming outside with us?" he asks.

"We want to kiss you," she explains, at another corner.

"Alice, I only want to kiss _you_. I don't want to kiss your friend," he says, and I like this, for her sake. Plenty of boys want two girls at once. Some boys want to share one girl between them.

"She only wants to kiss you once," Al-ys murmurs.

We are now somewhere hidden and away from an area of any pedestrian traffic. No-one will hear us, and no-one will stumble upon us. Al-ys and I can see, but Jasper won't be able to. She reaches up and traces a row of tiny kisses on his neck, her mouth moving quickly to his throat, and his eyes close as he feels her. She is standing to the side of him and pulls at his head until she can reach his face, and her lips move over his cheeks and towards his mouth. We hear him groan softly and I can almost feel his excitement as her tongue flicks at his teeth, her mouth meeting his at last. Then I feel his astonishment as my hands move to his belt.

He drags his mouth back from her.

"Bella, what are you doing? I don't want you to do this. Alice - just you. Just you - "

Her mouth takes his words as I undo his pants and reach for his cock. I believe him when he says he doesn't want me to do this, but his body is reacting to my touch. His cock is beautiful in my hands and I pause to wonder if maybe one day I would hold one under different circumstances, without the intention to do what I am about to do. I've never given more than a fleeting thought to having a cock in my fingers or my mouth or my body in the way that Al-ys wants his.

He moans lightly again and he tries to push me away but he is distracted by Al-ys unbuttoning his shirt to stroke his chest, and by her lips following her fingers, and though he is saying no to me, he will not interrupt Al-ys.

I sink to my knees in front of him, and this is the part I love. This is when I am exhilarated. My tongue seeks the already engorged corpus spongiosum and flickers along it on my way to his glans, which I take wholly into my mouth. To my surprise, this boy wrenches himself from Al-ys and gasps, "No," to me again, but now I have tasted him. Anyway, I never let them go. Why would I? By the time we get to this stage, their deaths are foregone conclusions. They are all different, and without exaggeration he is the most delicious. His velvet sliding skin is in my mouth again, and my hands imprison his hips, pulling him to me as I give him the kiss that will kill him. Because he is resisting, it takes longer than it takes with most men. His corpora continue to swell and stiffen to the touch of my lips, and I thrill to the nearness of the blood inside them, seconds away from my teeth.

I know the instant he is about to climax, I am cupping his testes and feel the tightness of the skin around them, and I feel the pulsing along his length, and I can feel the signals of his body, hear him moaning to Al-ys, feel her tense as she knows what will happen, and at the exact moment his seed spurts from him I move my mouth to the underside of his penis where his superficial dorsal vein lies, and sink my teeth in.

Oh, he's gorgeous. I knew he would be this beautiful, this sweet. I knew the rushing would fill me. In his ecstasy he doesn't know what I've done, they never do, they slip into unconsciousness still in the throes of orgasm and feel no fear or pain. It's the least I can do, give them this gift as they give me theirs. And as this steadfast, lovely boy blacks out, he is whispering Al-ys's name and she is whispering his, easing him to the ground, arms around him and tears on her soft cheeks.

I have only given the kiss of life a couple of times before, but it is not something you can forget how to do. Al-ys cradles him, and before his heart stops I am bent over his face, opening his mouth with my thumb. I have plenty of his blood, the blood pressure in an erect penis being much higher than that in the body's main circulatory system. I give him his blood back, my mouth tight over his so that none can escape. His body spasms and jerks as it tries to reject this unnatural ingestion, but my sister and I hold him firm and he swallows involuntarily. When I finish I am exhausted, Al-ys is exceedingly worried, and Jasper is still and unbreathing. He is not alive, but we didn't expect him to be.

Al-ys picks him up easily, and I scan the area. I haven't spilled a drop of blood.

There is no-one about as we take him to our rooms, and Al-ys lays him out the bed to wait. The transformation will take approximately twelve hours and he will wake a new man, literally. She settles herself to watch him, and I retire to my own room, thinking my own thoughts.

No human male has ever shown me that sort of reluctance before. In all my years it simply isn't possible that I've never met a man who was actually in love, yet this Jasper has shown me something. He has known Al-ys only a week, and he tried to stop me from doing something to him that all men desire, because he wanted only Al-ys. It is a revelation, and I wonder for the first time if there could be a love, and a lover for me. I have never even considered it.

I read, I brush my hair - normally a sensuous task undertaken with quiet relish by my adoring Al-ys - I brood and I wait. There are cries from the room next door as the boy burns. He must be thrashing about, and Al-ys must be holding him so that he doesn't arch himself off the bed in his agony, and break bones. They will settle forever into a broken shape if this happens.

After hours and hours, the sounds change. Al-ys is singing lullabies in her soothing voice, and then she calls to him to wake. I hear low murmurs, his deep tones, and her responses, higher and lighter as they talk. Then the other sounds come. For hours. I never knew such pleasure existed in the world. Again, again and again, crescendos from Al-ys and from her newly created vampire lover who is, of course, tireless. What they are doing to each other is unimaginable, although I can imagine it. I can _hear _it. I leave them and go out, and when I return it is still going on.

Days later, Al-ys and Jasper emerge and they are joined, his arm over her shoulder, from his armpit to their very ankles. I am mildly uncomfortable.

"Jasper, you remember Bel'aa?" Al-ys says, eyes sparkling, lips almost bruised, hair aloft and smile so full of repletion I am startled. She has never looked lovelier.

"Yes," he grins crookedly, his too large mouth alive in his pale face. He is very attractive.

"Mistress," Al-ys begins hesitantly, and her Jasper quirks an eyebrow.

"_Mistress_?" he asks, still grinning. His unkempt hair looks as though a very small, very strong creature has been tugging at it for three days and three nights. His voice is slow and deep, his shirt open to show bites and scratches on his chest, his hands on his girl. She is mine no more.

"Alice and I will be keepin' company from here on in, Bella," he drawls. "I'm obliged to you for bringin' us together in the way you did, although..." he shakes his head, though the grin is unshakeable. He accompanies it with a shrug. "I always thought there was a whole neck-bitin' thing goin' with your kind. That's what the books say... wouldn't ever have expected to get a bitin' quite like _that_..."

Al-ys reaches up to kiss him. I have completely lost her, I see it. Al-ys was my only love and now she loves another, and I can see that they will both leave me.

"Bel'aa, there is someone for you here in this town. I can see you with him. You will find him soon," Al-ys tries to soothe me. She couldn't be lying, she never has, but is she just saying this to soften the blow of her abandonment?

"Alice is right. I can feel it," Jasper, her willing accomplice adds. Their hands have not left one another. Their _thoughts_ have not left one another. They are saying things they hope will make their desertion of me more bearable, but it is still unbearable.

"I will see you again, mistress," Al-ys whispers as she hugs me, arms about my neck and hands in my hair, sweet lips to my cheek. "Wherever you are, I will find you. Fiorenza, Darfur, Melbourne, Ushuaia. Jasper and I will have our honeymoon and then we will come to you."

I go out alone, and now that Al-ys is not with me I don't have to go to the thudding, pounding nightclubs she loves to frequent. The city's Concert Hall has a program of classical music and this is where I seek to ease my aching heart amongst the strains of Beethoven's Bagatelles. I slip into a seat in the back row, far from the pianist playing solo, and survey the audience. Al-ys and Jasper both claimed I would find a new love, were both sure of it. The notes ripple and swell, the audience are spellbound. Music has always spoken to me. Can it tell me the answer to my question? Where will he be?

.

.

.

Thank you.


	2. Chapter 2

**My Queen**

In jaguars, melanism is due to a dominant allele. In leopards, it is negative. I didn't know what she was at the time, all I knew what that she was very large and supremely unafraid, dark as midnight with rosettes on her supple pelt an indigo darker again than that. Her eyes were peridot. She was the most magnificent thing I'd ever seen.

I was in Rajasthan, southern India. From my baptism in blood I had travelled far, and would travel farther still in search of the exotic and the familiar, the safe and the wild. I liked sparsely populated villages, and densely populated cities. I liked rural areas where the yield is low, and I had recently discovered that I liked jungle where there is nary a person to be found, and the eating is mammalian, but of different species. The humidity is held in by the blanket of canopy and the selection on offer is superb, if one can get one's taste buds around the unexpected.

Primates are my preference of course. They are on the whole too small for me to feel replete, but several langur monkeys in succession fill me nicely. On this particular day I had enjoyed an appetizer or two, and was looking forward to my main course. Gibbon is pleasant, and I had my senses on alert, wondering if one of the shy beasts would stray into my path.

Big cats are nocturnal, and my queen shouldn't have been awake. But just as I caught the faint aroma of something I wanted, I scented something else entirely, something tantalizing beyond measure. Fruit and plant eaters have their smell, carnivores have theirs. There was a carnivore, big and delicious near me.

Pushing through vines and palms I found her, tearing apart a boar. She knew unerringly that I was there and looked up, ears flattened to her head, fangs dripping with a mixture of her own saliva and the juices of the freshly killed animal beneath her. Her coat rippled with the splendor of her strength, and her eyes shone with the gloss of her readiness and will to counter any opposition.

Normally, I am feared. Urban humans are slow to pick up on the danger that I represent, their senses having been dulled by their removal from nature, but once they get a good look, they get worried. People who live in jungles are more attuned to the wild, and more in touch with their intuition, and they seem to scent me and fear for their lives, as well they might. Animals flee, without exception.

But she stared, a flat malevolence in her gaze. There was no judgement, no insight, just a blind instinct, an imperative. She didn't even weigh me up and assess the threat - she wasted no time and leapt at me, unsheathed claws seeking my flesh, jaws unswerving in their trajectory. She aimed to break my neck, as she would with any adversary.

I staggered beneath her, and she was heavy. I grasped at her, but she was fluid and slinking, spine bending impossibly, righting herself, flinging herself off, gathering herself ready, again. She had no fear, she simply saw me and obeyed the instinct that had seen her ancestors reign in this sticky, carnal, heated habitat for millions of years. She was lithe and relentless, seeking my throat like a lover who would not accept refusal. I had never been so in awe of a living thing.

It was a real fight - we were as strong as one another, as sure of winning. She could not acknowledge the possibility of failure, having not the imagination for it. I could, and possibly it gave her the edge. She was more suited to the environment than I was, being far more agile than I. But ultimately, I didn't want to kill her, I couldn't have borne it. Strange I could feed from humans and leave them in my wake, gasping their last breaths, but this queen was too majestic, too precious, too proud and too wild for me to contemplate taking her.

When I eventually held her underneath me, her eyes expressing no surrender, I had no choice, no option. She fought me as I bent her head back to expose her throat, she resisted and growled, and her majesty showed no diminishment. I thought her courage should never be dimmed or dulled, her unyielding spirit never extinguished.

Unlike her, I had no fangs. But my teeth were sharp, my jaw was strong, and I could bite as hard as I ever needed to. Even as I forced her neck to my mouth, sank into her pelt, she clawed at me and snarled. I felt the rumble in her throat while I made her mine. Well - she would never be mine - she was untameable. I made her wildness unending. I drank of her dark, dark essence, the beauty of the utter wild, and I infected her with the elixir I carry internally and had never bestowed elsewhere. I had never found anyone or anything I considered worthy, until my queen.

I left her there, lying amongst the rich, glorious lushness and damp, and I went on, on with my impatience and lust, my impulse and curiosity, on with my restless travels and travails, my explorations.

I would have stayed if I had seen one flash of recognition in those expressionless eyes, one sign that she acknowledged me and would continue to know me - but that wasn't the point. She was beyond, above and outside me - the finest and purest thing I have ever witnessed, sentient yet unhindered by sentiment, self-contained and utter.

It was many years later when I, itinerant still, heard stories coming from Britain of wild cats, though lions had been extinct in Europe for hundreds of years. Some windswept and inhospitable place called Bodmin Moor in England's southwest was the site where people were reporting having seen a creature, far, far larger than a domestic cat, yet possessed of feline grace. There were accounts of livestock found with broken necks and gougings from their soft parts. The tales continued, and continued. In 1995 a skull was found, and was determined to be that of a leopard. Fears were allayed, as it was thought the mysterious and impossible predator was dead and the talk stopped.

But the slaughter didn't. Killings were still reported, though quietly.

I don't know how she got there, my queen, but I suspect that that is where she is, for now. It is said that during the sixties it was the fashion to have a pet cheetah, or tiger, until laws were passed against such practices. Not knowing what to do with the animals, the irresponsible owners set them free. By the nineties, the felines would have all been dead, there being insufficient of them to breed, but still the occasional article appears in newspapers. Undying and ageless, my queen reigns over a bare place and will need a new home soon, to continue feeding, and she will need a new source. She will find a way.

Did Noah decide what creatures were to survive the deluge - did he make choices as to what he would carry? Dinosaurs became extinct because they were too big to fit in the ark, they would have sunk it. I played Noah and decided my queen would survive - I decided in a split second based on a raw emotion I felt and couldn't identify, and I have wondered since what it was. Reverence?

I don't need to see her again, because I know she roams, and can never be contained, never harmed. My wonder will ever abide. She doesn't want or need me, she has no use for company.

I brood, I contemplate, I agonize, I suffer, cast from humanity with no other society to accept me, living to hope and seek, always wanting.

She lives to live.

.

.

.

Though chapter two, this is a prequel.


	3. Chapter 3

Here we go, here we go, here we go again...

**Long I Lay In The Ground**

It will be a few weeks before I need to feed again, and I wonder how I will manage without Al-ys. Since she has been with me, I haven't had to find my own meals. I haven't had to dispose of the waste either. This modern world is different and new and its noises are jarring - I barely maintain composure without my beloved companion at my side, giving me her calm assurances and wise insights.

All that soothes me is music and art and culture, and the art and culture isn't too hard to find in a gracious city of spires and inspired architecture. I'm not finding the music quite so much to my liking, though. Having no further cause to visit the dens of thumping darkness and chemical iniquity so enjoyed by pretty Al-ys I seek the soothing and soaring pleasures of classical recitals - but it seems no single musician in this town has more than a cloth ear and leaden fingers. The very best of them are barely proficient, and the gap between proficiency and accomplishment is as a chasm to me. It would be easier to listen to someone who is bereft of ability than someone whose deviation from perfection is infinitesimal, yet I am misled by advertising.

Night after night I visit the Concert Hall, the Recital Theatre, or the Auditorium, seeking to assuage my loneliness and despair with beauty. The billboards and posters outside these venues promise an evening with the reknowned, the acclaimed and the celebrated, and I sit in the dark, waiting to be transported, willing to ascend to a higher plane where words mean nothing and music speaks to the soul in notes of purity and grace. I am always disappointed, returning still earthbound to my rooms.

Tonight I have purchased a ticket to a performance by some young man purported to be brilliant and dazzling, a genius. He is a pianist, and I don't have high hopes - I am drawing the conclusion now that humans simply cannot attain the splendor necessary to play truly well. They lack the dexterity, they lack the ear, and their souls are too superficial, each and every one of them. Of course it is not their fault that I perceive their efforts in this way. It is an attestation to the aspiring of the human spirit that so many of them strive so hard in their pursuit of musical endeavor. I listen to this man, and I grudgingly concede that he is the best I've heard. He comes so close, so close - he is a hair's breadth from what I want and need and crave, but that hair might as well be a mile in diameter. He is the best, and because of it, he hurts me the most.

After the concert I linger in the lobby of the theatre. My appetite is whet, and there are people all around me here. Surely I will find someone suitable? The loss of Al-ys is weighing on me even more heavily now that I hunger so deeply, and I must either kill or go back into the ground.

Amongst the milling throng I am surprised to catch a glimpse of tonight's alleged genius circling and greeting his admirers. Was I the only one who found his playing excruciating? People fawn over him, and he inclines his head graciously, accepting the adulation and praise, and I find myself affronted. He is undeserving of their acclaim as his intonation lacked subtlety, his timing was imprecise, and his entire presentation was unfeeling and heavy-handed.

I suddenly know how I will dine. He is not unattractive, and I will at the same time slake my thirst, and rid this town of a fraud masquerading as an artiste. He approaches me, and I smile. I will be the most alluring creature he has ever seen, because that is exactly what I am. Within moments I will be attuned to him, telling him everything he wants to hear, and flattering him. He will be unable to offer any resistance, and from then it will be just a simple matter of my deciding when and where he will take his last breath.

But as he comes alongside me, ably carrying out his mission to meet and thank individually everyone who is waiting here to speak to him, I am arrested. He is not normal! For a start, he is unnaturally pale, but that's not it - that's not what has caught my attention and confounded me. It is his scent. He is human - undeniably so - but what is this undertone, this base note that assails my nostrils and takes me back hundreds of years? One of my kind has touched him. It is unmistakeable.

My head flies up, my gaze searches the room, even as he glances to me and he extends his hand. Someone has marked him, invisibly, as a dog marks a tree or a tire, and recently. I cannot imagine why a vampire would bite a human and allow the human to live, but his veins carry a minute amount of venom and vampire saliva, though his heart still beats and his blood still pulses.

"Thank you so much for attending tonight. I hope you have enjoyed your evening," he says, and his voice has a silken timbre. I look disconcertedly at him, noting a vivid greenness to his eyes and a cut-glass precision to his cheekbones. He has been chosen. Somewhere not far from here is his Keeper - and who knows what perverse arrangement they have entered into?

However, despite my confidence that he must assume that I am like all the other humans here this evening, recognition flares in his eyes, and his grip on my hand falters. He knows what I am. My plans for the rest of the night now demand alteration, as my curiosity is piqued. I cannot take him somewhere dark and private and lick the life out of him, because he is somebody's favorite, somebody's human pet. And anyway, he would quite possibly refuse to go. He may be unseduceable.

"Who are you?" he asks me abruptly, his boldness intriguing. He must be very sure of his Keeper, to challenge me in such a way.

"Who are _you_?" I respond.

Smiling, he indicates the posters around the walls, featuring photographs of him. "I am Edward Cullen," he answers.

Before I can reply, I scent and hear a vampire approach, swiftly. A female. She is displeased that her Ward is talking to a woman for longer than a polite few seconds, and as she gets closer, her displeasure changes to disbelief. She is insecure and possessive, and she has enslaved this man with poison and coercion, and she loves him, but he doesn't love her. I know all of this before she appears, yet still when I see her I am completely taken aback.

Blonde, small, and pretty, she is nevertheless little more than a child. He is a man, maybe twenty-two, twenty-five at the most, and she is barely adolescent, perhaps fourteen. Every gesture of her body, every tilt of her head indicates that she is painfully in love with this human at her side, but he regards her as man regards a young girl. It is immaterial that she has been alive much longer than he has, and her soul and mind have matured way beyond her physical appearance. To society, she is far too young to have a lover ten years older than her. She is too young to have a sexual partner at all - it would be illegal and immoral. And the way he is regarding her shows plainly that he will never be her lover.

"Edward!" she commands sharply, and he inclines his head towards her. The tragic mismatch between them is clearly evident and I am sorry - _so_ sorry - for her situation.

Now I haven't met many others like me, and certainly none like her, but I am the senior here. It is up to me to initiate a greeting.

"Good evening. My name is Bel'aa. This is certainly an unexpected pleasure," I say.

She all but prickles with hostility. I can see that she doesn't even want to give me her name, but her Ward does it for her.

"This is Jane," he says. Trembling with resentment and apparent fear, she shoots daggers at me from glacial blue eyes. I can only surmise that she considers me a threat, and perhaps she hasn't been threatened before, but Edward Cullen is looking me as a man looks at a woman.

When he adds, "Jane is my sister," I sense her fury. We're in public here, and I see she would like to reprimand him, but I also understand that this is how they must present themselves. He must perform on the touring circuit, moving endlessly from city to city, and how else could he be accompanied by a teenage girl unless he is some sort of official guardian for her? How could they travel above suspicion unless they are related? They have no doubt concocted stories of long-distance study, of dead parents, no other relatives, and an unwillingness on both their parts for young, vulnerable Jane to be placed in boarding school or with a foster family.

There is no need for her to refute his claim, though, because to me it is laughable.

"Indeed," I respond politely, wondering quite what the hold is that they have over one another. She drinks from him, I can smell it. Each has traces of the other in their scent. But why would he be with her, when in human terms he is so pleasing? He doesn't want her sexually and cannot bring himself to make love to her - this is plain to me. Perhaps she permits him human lovers as long as he remains attentive to her. Their whole scenario is dark and sinister and delicious, and I want to _know_. I must ask the little demon though, not her attractive pet.

"Perhaps you would care to visit me tonight? There is much we could talk about. I imagine your life is remarkable," I tell her, and I employ every wile I have at my disposal to get the savage, unhappy girl to agree. She was too young to be turned, and will forever be alone unless she finds herself a vampire partner who will overlook her physical age. She has fallen for entirely the wrong mate. She loathes me on sight, because I am of an age to lure her love from her, but she has no-one to turn to, no support, no ally. What she needs is a mother, but I cannot be mother to her.

"Yes, I will visit you," she purrs lowly, though I know she wishes I were on the other side of the continent. She would like to throw me there.

"And now, you must excuse us as there are many people here Edward and I need to thank. I will find you later. Expect me in two hours," she says, gliding away without needing to ask my address. She will be able to track me.

Later, I am waiting in my rooms, listening to Verdi and lightly agitated, still hungry. The haughty little china doll will come, I have no doubt. Perhaps she thinks she will discomfit me by being late, and making me wait for her. Perhaps her protégé is simply so esteemed that they have been caught up talking to people - humans who admire him. Humans who want him. The level of pain she must suffer on a daily basis astounds me. But however late she chooses to arrive - arrive she will. A philosopher once said, "Keep you friends close, and your enemies closer."

She will not dare _not_ to call on me - in case Edward does.

Once I hear her silent footfall, I determine instantly that she is alone, and it disappoints me. My disappointment is undetectable though, even by the most discerning of observers. I welcome her with genuine interest.

"Please forgive Edward's absence. He tires after a performance, as you may imagine, and he is now resting," she offers smoothly, by way of explanation.

"Have you dined?" I ask.

It's a loaded question, but she chooses to read it on one level only, and shrugs.

"Not for some time. I am a little peckish," she admits. So she has not partaken of her pianist tonight - although I already knew it. All scents are unique, having their own signature even when blended. Hers has the lingering hint of his in it, but from days ago. Maybe she doesn't seek his blood too close to a performance, for fear that he would be depleted. I'm sorry that she is young and lonely, but suddenly I am filled with ire that she enthralls this mortal and takes blood from him, and will neither let him go nor change him.

"And how is it that you came to be?" I ask, cloaking my distaste and offering my arm. She is a child after all, and cannot walk the streets of the city after dark without an escort.

"I don't want to bore you with that story. I'm more interested in talking about you," she answers, deflecting. "You are clearly more ancient than I. Your history must be fascinating."

I find myself amused at her veiled insult, but I have no wish to talk about myself and desire to hear only of her, and thus we reach an impasse.

"I _am_ antediluvian," I admit, and she doesn't know the word. Poor thing, I shouldn't tease her. "I was born many few centuries ago in a place that no longer exists. Not before the so-called Great Flood, but before a major flood, certainly, that covered my homeland so completely that though its existence is rumored, it has never been proven. The world was a very different place then. Our kind were celebrated and revered, and admirers flocked to see us, crossing oceans and mountains just for a glimpse. We were treated as idols, and had the power to bestow great gifts on those we considered worthy. As we still do."

I smoothly brought the conversation around to what I wanted to talk about. "Your brother is a very talented musician - in fact the best human player I have ever heard - yet his performance is still so stilted and unfocused as to almost cause me pain. You know this - it must have the same effect on you. I am curious as to why you not give him the ultimate gift and make him the truly brilliant exponent he deserves to be."

Jane frowns and beneath her tightly controlled surface I am aware of her irritation, but she maintains her composure.

"He has improved greatly since being under my tutelage. I will never do as you suggest because it would harm Edward's ambition. He wants a career. As long as he continues to age, he will be accepted. Obviously, I cannot be seen as his companion for longer than two or three years because I cannot sufficiently alter my appearance. I will have to fade into the background soon, and be content with watching him from a distance." She sighs, her pretty face still a mask, yet a troubled one.

"For another thing, it is simply not possible for a human to become a better technician than a human is capable of becoming. If Edward underwent the transformation, his playing would be far too accomplished and intuitive and visionary for a mortal. It would draw attention to him and to us, and I fear discovery. Discovery, as I'm sure you'll agree, would be catastrophic."

Her reasoning is sound and plausible. She has rationalized her refusal to change Edward, and as she repeats it to me, as I am sure she has repeated it both to herself and him, she sounds completely sincere. I have my suspicions that these are not her only reasons, though. Distasteful as the idea is to me, I believe she may be keeping him as a handy, entertaining and highly decorative source of sustenance. A pet who also serves as an aperitif. At her age, it must be difficult to wander the streets alone at night, hunting. As long as she can sip from Edward, she need never suffer true hunger and can afford to go without predating when conditions are less than ideal.

I find myself torn between finding her choice repugnant, and yet understandable. I am forever twenty-three human years, and will never know her predicament.

"Shall we go for a walk?" I suggest. "We can see what this city has to offer in terms of dining options."

Accompanied by me, Jane can walk the night streets, and we can window-shop and people watch.

She agrees, and we set out. It is around midnight, and the night is temperate. This is a cosmopolitan city, with a variety of its inhabitants and visitors still strolling about, visiting the late night bars and clubs. Streams of noises pour from doors and windows, and I am drawn to the sound of a soulful, lone clarinet in a backstreet cafe.

"Jazz? I've no time for it," Jane snorts, but we go in and listen for a while, although I sense her restlessness. Maybe it's time we found our dinner.

Outside, the alleys beckon. We're not far from the waterfront, and we'll need somewhere to dispose of a body, so we're in the optimum location.

"Preferences?" I ask my companion, in case she has particular requirements. This is the red light area, and the people gliding about are women dressed provocatively, and men who reek of vice and dishonesty. Jane makes her selection quickly, and approaches a scantily-clad girl. The girl looks up in alarm as Jane approaches, but her pimp isn't nearby, and her attacker is swift. To my surprise though, Jane wants to play. She asks the girl about what she does and what she earns, and what the clients are like. She pretends to be a runaway with a drug addiction who needs fast money. The girl she is speaking to is clearly intoxicated on something or other, but beneath the slurring she is kind, and tries to advise Jane to find another solution. She suggests the churches, and the charities - anything but prostitution. Jane pretends to listen and consider, but suddenly she lunges, and bites savagely at the girl's throat. I don't know why, but she hasn't gone for the artery, and she has hurt the girl without giving her a fatal wound. The girl can't scream, and her breath comes raspingly as she tries to plead, but then Jane begins to gouge her with fingernails, leaving cruel, deep grooves in her chest.

I fly forward and pull Jane's arm back, wondering why she would torture a victim. Her eyes gleam and she resists me, although I am stronger than she is. She puts up a fight while the human girl has collapsed to the ground groaning and sobbing in her agony and terror.

"Let me be!" Jane snarls in fury, bloodlust clouding her eyes and turning them scarlet.

I shake her off and snap the girl's neck. No-one deserves to be persecuted, and I can't understand what would possess Jane to prolong a death in such a cruel way. We have barely seconds to feed before the blood is no good, but I have no appetite for it now anyway. Jane sucks noisily for as long as she can, then raises her head to regard me.

"Why did you do that?" she asks.

"Why did you?" I counter.

"Cortisol," she responds. "I love it."

"Jane - they're _sentient_," I stress. "We give them and take from them their last minutes, and they go to their eternal rest. Their deaths are ours - we are the arbiters of mortality. Humanity suffer enough in their temporal existence - they endure disappointments and lose loved ones. We need not send them off in anguish."

Her sapphire eyes narrow at me, her pale face twisted into a sneer.

"Perhaps you're not aware of my everlasting circumstance, dear Bella," she replies. "I endure an _eternal anguish_, locked in this barely pubescent body. I can't drive, I can't go unaccompanied into licensed premises, I can't take out a lease on a property, or manage my own financial affairs. I'm questioned by authority figures at every turn. If I appear in public any day of the week I'm asked why I'm not at school. On the weekend, I'm asked where my parents are. Despite being emotionally and intellectually mature far beyond my appearance I cannot take a lover, because only perverts would fuck a fourteen year old. These things will _never, ever_ change. You speak of pain so blithely. What could you possibly know of it? Mine is alleviated if someone else can take it on for five minutes. Five minutes' reprieve isn't much, in the face of forever."

Much of what she says is true. I am looking into the howling, relentless, bitter fury of an unremitting impotence.

"Jane, this girl did nothing to hurt you. Your maker is responsible for what you are," I attempt, inadequately.

"_Him_?" she snarls. "Oh, Madame Bella, he is long, long dead, and he was a long, long time dying, I made sure of it. Sometimes I wish I hadn't ended him, so that I could do it anew. The one thing that miserable sadist bequeathed to me besides this everlasting and hateful childhood was a wish to kill him nightly. I would put him a dungeon if I could, I would chain him and starve him to a state of weakness, and then I would sit opposite him and taunt him with little kindnesses, because cruelty was all he knew. Cruelty fed him and made him powerful - I would smile and thank him, and he would scream. I know this because it's what already happened. I drove him insane by singing to him and saying I couldn't bear to leave him to his solitude and suffering."

It occurs to me then that Jane is close to becoming unhinged. It also occurs to me that I know someone I could take her to. My own maker, who I haven't seen in well over a century. He lives a quiet and sumptuous life, surrounding himself by others like us, yet not like. His entourage are those upon whom the dark blessing sits uneasily, who are not quite reconciled to the burden and the fire of immortality. He provides a haven for the dislocated, and offers care and non-judgement. In return, he is able to simply observe. His curiosity regarding the vagaries and varieties of the human condition, amplified once vampirism comes into the equation, is unquenchable. He would harbor Jane if she were willing to go to him, and perhaps she would not feel so devastated, so acrimonious, and so unempowered amongst his collection of vampire oddities.

But would she leave Edward? How attached was she to him?

There is no God and therefore I do not pray, but I speak words of reflection now and again to clarify my thoughts and to offer acknowledgement of events. Briefly, I spoke to the lifeless young prostitute, holding her in my arms, and expressing my regret that life had brought her hardship. I was sorry that she had died frightened. Jane was sullen and silent as I laid the body tenderly in a doorway, arranging the limbs to be redolent of sleep, and licking the neck clean, though the flavor of dried blood is unpleasant.

And then I turned to Jane.

"Would you like to come with me to Europe?"

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Pick me! Pick me! _I'll_ go to Europe!


	4. Chapter 4

Characters belong to Stephenie Meyer although not much in this story resembles anything you've read by her.

Chapter Four.

**Long I Lay In The Ground**

One was born pure gold.

"Do you not see? Can you not see?" she asked plaintively, becoming more and more forlorn as they couldn't see. Over the weeks she took to shrieking and could not be silenced.

"Do not come near me! I destroy everything I touch!"

Eventually she silenced herself, being rendered so hoarse that her voice failed her. After that all they could see was a woman grown gaunt from the exertion of screaming, and from lack of nutrition despite force-feeding.

Another could fly, and broke both legs attempting to prove it when the watch on her proved lax and she escaped and clambered to the roof. Restraints were required to prevent a recurrence.

Another still put out her own eye with her own hand. "The beauty is too much for me, I ache so," she had muttered. If anyone had had an inkling they might have seen this as the warning it was.

I could hear the tumult coming from the place all day, as could everyone in the vicinity, and I could imagine the horror behind the walls. Nights were quiet, once the laudanum had been administered, and probably the staff would have liked to dose it out in the mornings as well, but the scant money available wasn't sufficient for that. Probably the staff would have liked to be able to offer mercy to the unfortunates and give them enough laudanum to keep them quiet for good, but questions would be asked if all the inmates of a Bedlam were to expire at once.

So the piteous noises continued, yet amidst the cacaphony one thing stood out. Day after day, gentle and bright through the chaos, came the distinctive beat of a singular heart. Some of my kind find themselves drawn to particular scents, some are attracted by beauty, though we are all beautiful. I had yet to be attracted by anything, until the first fluttering thump came to me, followed by its accompanying second. Ba-dum, ba-dum, ba-dum.

In a women's insane asylum, my unknown attractor was most likely to be female. During the days I spent listening, I surmised that the owner of the heart was not hysterical, as the regular constancy of the beat barely changed come nightfall, other than a peaceful slowing. This meant no drugs. Perhaps My Heart was a staff member? A medical practitioner? A clinician? An administrator?

Visitors were allowed, though rare. It is highly distressing to be amongst the insane, for their eyes may roll up in their heads, they may touch their private parts in public, they may howl or gibber, or they may do nothing untoward at all. For safety's sake, I believe the lunatics are bound by their wrists and ankles to chairs, and if they froth at the mouth or defecate as they sit, at least they cannot reach the person who has come to call on them.

I didn't know the name of the person I wanted to see, so how best could I arrange to get in the door? Perhaps I could construct a persona who might visit such a place in a professional capacity, in order to conduct an inspection. "I am Dr. Such and Such, from your sister hospital in Boston, Massachusetts, and I have heard of the work you are doing here. I believe tongue depression and gagging can be very effective measures during severe convulsions. Do you find this to be so? I wish to tour the premises."

There are no women doctors in this unenlightened age.

"I am the director of an institution in San Rafaello, California. We have implemented a staff training procedure which has resulted in fewer assaults upon staff by residents. I would like to meet all your staff, and subsequently all your patients in order to assess whether the program might work for you."

"My aunt has begun to wander in her mind. Her physical health remains good, but she no longer recognizes familiar faces, and she makes strange and unexpected utterances, and she throws her food. We find ourselves unable to give her the care she needs - would you have a bed here for a sick woman who cannot quite be in society any more?"

It doesn't matter what I say, I just yearn to get within those high stone walls, through the heavy iron gate. I will be guided once I am inside by the magnetic pull of who I want to find.

Dressing myself in as conservative a costume as I can procure from a dressmaker's shop in the town, I make ready. My hair is short, and curls lightly around my earlobes. My shoes have buckles, and a low heel. I wish to appear unostentatious and unremarkable, as flamboyance will not admit me entrance.

Electing to advance my cause with the second ploy - the one promising fewer outbreaks of violence upon nurses and aides and cleaners - I gain entry and an audience with the manager.

He tells me some of these women used foul language, some engaged in licentious behavior, and some were even guilty of having refused to perform housework. That is how they have found themselves in the asylum. One woman with twelve children actually refused her husband his conjugal rights! Many of the residents are considered so mentally ill as to be beyond salvation.

"Admonishments are ineffectual when dealing with the deranged," I murmur. "Stronger methods are called for, yes, I am absolutely in accord with your observations."

The manager is a misanthrope, who cares nothing for the charges of his facility, has no compassion, and whom I suspect derives a nasty and secret pleasure from their humiliation. Once I have captured my elusive quarry, the manager's head will roll.

"May I see the grounds?" I ask, though I have no interest in the grounds. My Heart is somewhere nearby.

The grounds don't amount to much, expansive though they are. No-one seems to have thought that trees and plants and flowers might inculcate any sense of tranquility in a troubled mind, and there is no seating and no attempt at landscaping. I think of Britain, and the work of Capability Brown - long ago now but still fresh to me - and I recapture the sense of verdancy and possibility and order and cycles, and each separate part acknowledged and necessary as a valued segment of a functioning whole.

But here, I hate this horrid place and what is done here to women who are simply overwhelmed by discovering that their girlhood of having to help around the home has led to a womanhood that offers them nothing more, and that their agitation and protests have not freed them, and have in fact have led to their being pronounced mad. Some have sought superficial refuge in their madness, some are helplessly sunken into it, some are here for no reason at all, other than that they have mystified people around them.

And thus, I find My Heart. She is a tiny sparrow, a canary, a nightingale whose pulse sings to me and whose blood I hear beyond and above all others. She's in the garden, a wildflower amongst tame and cultivated blooms, and I know her when I've yet to see her. I would run, knowing her to be close, longing for my first glimpse of the girl-woman for whom I will smash down these walls of indifference and stone.

"Ah, this is Alice," the manager informs me, and My Heart's name is nothing and everything - fitting and incongruous. How can a name be representative of somebody? And yet those few letters encapsulate the creature who raises her glance to me. Alabaster-skinned, sable-haired, amber-eyed, fey and winsome. I loved her without having seen her, and now I am enchanted. She is thin and I am breathless.

"Hello, Al-ys," I offer gently, not knowing how damaged she may be, but hoping from the strength and greatness of her heart that she is not damaged at all.

"Alice knows the future - don't you, my dear? You know things before they happen?" Miss Something-or-Other says in a patronizing voice.

"I know I will go with you," Al-ys says to me. I know she will, too. She and I are mine and hers.

There are formalities - I go through some form-signing under my assumed name, and I say I will submit my report and recommendations.

"And who holds guardianship over the girl Al-ys?" I enquire. "Those who claim to recognize portents are of particular interest to me. I would be most appreciative of the opportunity to study her further. Whose permission need I obtain in order to take her away with me?"

Apparently Al-ys's parents signed her away long ago. She claimed she saw visions of things that were yet to happen, and she detailed events and occurrences to her doubting family. When her predictions proved to be correct they determined in their small-mindedness and superstition that her premonitions were advice from the devil. Appalling as it is, I - a complete stranger - am given permission to take the girl Alice Brandon away with me. There are no checks made of my references - which are fabricated - or the details of my upbringing, education and employment, also fabricated.

I stand at the forbidding gates to my love's erstwhile prison, and to my amazement and delight, tiny Al-ys, with her steady drumbeat for a heart, stands with me, ready to face the world.

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Hey, just saying - last night I got my highest reader count ever - 611! - wow. Thank you so much.

And only one person commented! Lady Dragona, I salute you.


	5. Chapter 5

The one where Bel'aa - oh, just read it and see.

**Long I Lay In The Ground**

Quite amazingly, since this was supposed to be a one-shot - chapter 5!

I took Al-ys back to my house in the town, and pored over a map, wondering where to go next. We couldn't continue to reside in this place, though I had found it bearable enough. Bearable was as good as I expected, with my peripatetic existence, as once I had attended to half a dozen or so of the male inhabitants of anywhere I settled I needed to move on before people began to think that the aloof and mysterious newcomer was not only enigmatic, but perhaps a little suspicious.

And besides, I didn't want Al-ys subject to the small-town mentality of anyone who might draw attention to her previous abode, and question her right to be out of there. With her quick darting movements, sing-song little voice and tremulous demeanor, the ungenerous of spirit and narrow of mind might be ill-mannered enough to ask if she was on day leave, and whether her medication was up-to-date, and whether I was her nurse. I simply was not willing to let either of us endure that sort of attitude.

I'd been given pills and potions for her, of course, and some sort of redundant prescription for the same for the rest of her life. Quietly enraged at the knowledge that practitioners purportedly trained in the field of human mental illness thought that My Heart needed subduing in the form of orally administered chemicals - or indeed any subduing whatsoever - I tore up the prescription and disposed of the drugs.

And the manager's head did roll, if somewhat lop-sidedly.

I am not a sadist, but I need to eat, and I wasn't prepared to give him the sort of send-off I usually give. He was at a public house one night shortly after My Heart came with me from that dreadful place, and he wandered outside to relieve himself. Once he was quite finished and tidied up, I approached him and said I had concerns about Alice Brandon, and I just happened to be passing and had noticed him standing there. Would now be a suitable time for he and I to have a short chat? Of course, I could always come by the hospital in the morning...

My attractiveness to human men is not something they really stop and think about. He spent half a second considering whether to speak to me now, alone in the dark, or to wait until the next day when we would be surrounded by staff and distracted by crashes and moans as the imprisoned souls in the captivity of the institution over which he presided dashed themselves against walls and bars and expressed their pain.

"Of course, Dr Pavirem," he agreed with a leer. "What would you like to discuss?"

It was a small town, and the drinking establishment he was visiting was on the outskirts.

"Perhaps we could walk a little? I don't wish to be overheard," I murmured, and he followed me eagerly. There was a small copse of trees nearby with freshly dug earth beneath, and I could smell that an animal was buried under there - a dog. Somebody's pet, as evidenced by the little cross erected to one side, upon which was written in a childish hand "RIP, Fido. I love You"

The revolting man was more sick and deluded than any of the inmates confined in his asylum. He actually thought I had lured him out to this dark spot because I found him irresistible and wished to act on my carnal desires. This was written plainly on his face, and in the posture of his body as he leaned towards me.

Before he could get an inch closer I had felled him with a jab to the pharynx and as he lay unconscious I opened his subclavian vein and took a deep draught. The advantage of drinking from veins is the steady pressure due to their valves, unlike arterial flow which pulses. This wasn't a way of feeding particularly to my liking, but I would be replete for a couple of weeks, which would give Al-ys and I a chance to get acquainted. At some stage I would have to reveal the truth about myself to her, but I wanted to anticipate that she would have grown to like me by then, and perhaps even to be fond of me. For so many ages I had been solitary, and would doubtless have remained so if not for the thrilling call of her heart.

Even now I could feel its tug as she lay sleeping several streets away in the small house I rented. She was exhausted, my brave angel, finally liberated from the tribulations of the madhouse, all suffered at the whim of this nasty charlatan in my hands who masqueraded as a sympathetic guardian to the so-called insane, yet failed to recognize their traumas were exacerbated by their incarceration. I wasn't really thinking as I wrenched his head away from me, and by accident I pulled it right off his body, all the parts rending with a slurp but for the spinal column, which made more of a snapping sound. It had not been my intention to behead him. I set both segments down carefully while I began to dig the fragrant, recently-turned soil where beloved Fido had been interred.

It took but a matter of minutes to bypass the collie and create a grave no-one would think to look for, but I hadn't taken into account that the clump of trees over-seeing Fido's rest were on a small incline. The head of Al-ys's erstwhile warden had began a bumpy descent while I was occupied, and to my annoyance, once I had flung the body into its burial plot, I had to go looking for its ugly visage. Clear vision at night is no problem for me, and my sense of smell is enhanced and accurate. Locating the nasty item by both sight and scent, I tossed it in atop the rest of the remains and covered the whole grisly mess, leaving the grave exactly as I had found it. More or less exactly, that is.

My Heart slumbered still as I let myself into our shared accommodation and I washed myself and changed my clothes, sitting eventually in an armchair near to her bed, gazing in wonder and awe at her perfection. I had no need of sleep myself, but sitting for hours in repose relaxed me and granted me alertness anew at the same time. I knew I would spend hours and days and weeks, and _years_, in the company of this unexpected and gorgeous creature. I had never killed for anyone before. I hadn't longed for anyone before. I hadn't been engulfed by a blind haze, and _needed_ anyone.

In times long past, I had never wanted for company, or conversation, or entertainment. I had lived in a mad tumult of continuous delight - pretty, pretty boys vied for me as the greatest poets of the day composed paeans to my beauty and my glory and my majesty. Artists created portraits, both fantastical and realistic, showing the Goddess Bel'aa, Gracious Awarder of Exultation. Queen Bel'aa, who gifts Honor. The Lady Bel'aa, Bringer of Divinity.

It had been hollow. I lived and lived, and I read the poems and I examined the artworks, and there was something spoken of with reverence and longing that could bind people together unbreakably. It appeared in more than one form, and could be experienced in more than one way. It was elusive and sought-after and powerful, and people lived and breathed for it, and suffered and died for it. Love. What is love?

Men in their hundreds lined up for my attentions, women too. I understood that their infatuation occurred because I had a power which drew people to me. I came to regard it as a curse when I was inundated, always inundated, with those who wanted to speak to me, or touch me, or watch me, or even simply be in my presence. Sometimes they could be satisfied, even rendered insensible, by being in the same building as me, or by seeing or touching something I had seen or touched. It was all one-way, it was all unjustified, and it left me aching. The poets spoke of Love, and though I saw it exemplified thousands of times over in the way I saw mothers regard children, and husbands and wives regard one another, and the way friends touched easily and confidently, I never caught a glimpse of it for myself. The ache was present for centuries.

But the parties, the drunkenness, the dancing, the endless days and endless nights of meaningless gratification did in fact end, in a way soothsayers had predicted.

The earth heaved, and water rose and took my home, and took my people.

As it happened, I had become sorrowful and morose long before arbitrary forces arrested the advancement of the civilization that had been my domain. Always unchanging, I had observed as the inexorable behemoth of temporality saw babies grow into children, then into adults who made babies of their own, and then into old people who died. Always, I was left behind. I couldn't go with the idealistic and shining young men and women who gave themselves to me, and although it took me many, many years to understand, my status and condition was a handicap to finding love with any of those whose lives I didn't take. They aged, and I didn't.

One day lost in a fugue of despair I covered my face so as to prevent recognition, and took a boat to the mainland. I strode up a hill overlooking the impossibly blue ocean. It was as good a place as any to rest, and rest I did, burrowing deeply into the dry, ancient ground. I lay contemplating and remembering, willing oblivion to take me.

Unable to recall anything before I came to be as I was, I could remember only that I woke one morning in the distant, faraway past with a dark and pale black-eyed man sitting next to where I slept on the floor.

"Beautiful," he had sighed to me. "You will always be beautiful. I had to preserve you as you are now - because you are magnificent, and you will be even more so. You will never sleep again. You will be stronger than a bull. You will never grow old."

He spent a year of changing seasons with me, and taught me use of inexplicable powers I had somehow gained. When first he explained how I would feed from then on I was violently sick. I doubted his words, but time proved him to be right. Centuries gave further credence to everything he had told me.

And centuries is a measure of the time I have been alone, self-sufficient and self-contained, yet incomplete. Centuries is how long I wanted an Other.

And finally - finally! Miraculous and ethereal, here she was.

In modern written English her name was Alice. I understood this. However, when I first heard her name spoken, I heard it as Al-ys. That night, after I had ensured that her tormentor would never disrespect another woman, I knew myself to be Pandora. There were evils aplenty in the world - poverty, malice, hunger, cruelty - all of which had been visited upon My Heart.

But as I looked upon her alabaster cheek and the dark elegance of her brows, the birds-wing curve of her eyelashes, and the tiny blue beat in her throat, I felt the stirrings within me of something new and bold and constant and joyful. I was in the very presence of Hope.

And watching with total absorption the fragile, perfect little being who was entrusting herself to my care, I knew things were really the other way around. _I_ was entrusting myself to_ her_ - my heart was hers entirely. Al-ys was my first and only.

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I am always grateful for feedback. Pathetically grateful.


	6. Chapter 6

**Long I Lay In The Ground**

**Chapter 6**

"Edward has a series of engagements he must honor. I, of course, travel at his side, and appear with him at all public functions. We are busy and ambitious, as I am sure you have realized. Currently I am in the process of establishing connections in Europe so that he and I may travel there together, and he will be granted opportunities to perform before diverse and discerning audiences. It is certainly of interest to Edward and myself to visit Europe. But why, pray, would _you_ want to take us there?" Jane asked coolly.

"I have plenty of connections. I can arrange for Edward to study with masters, or to continue performing. It is not precisely Edward that I am thinking of," I admitted. "I have a - _compadre_ in Italy, a mentor. He was my maker in fact, and he has skills and knowledge unparalleled, to impart to the right protege. He is also a connoisseur of fine things, and is both eclectic and eccentric. I believe he would find you a most interesting guest, and you would find him a most engaging, generous and accommodating host."

Inclining her head, Jane gave consideration to my suggestion. She carried herself like a ballerina. Exquisite and tiny, her deportment could have been learned at the most exclusive of Swiss finishing schools. This elusive girl may not have as many stories as I did, but all of them were bound to be fascinating. Determining how to prise them from her would probably be fascinating, too.

"In three months," she murmured finally, outside the hotel she and Edward were staying in. I had to escort her to her place of accommodation, as of course it was far too late for an adolescent girl to be out on her own, even one whose head was set on her shoulders with the carriage of a bird of prey.

"You have travel documents?" I asked.

"Of course. We have everything in place, Bella. Edward and I manage very well, never doubt it. We will be in touch. May I have your cell number?"

Cell number. Al-ys had mentioned that I should acquaint myself with the communication capabilities of the modern age, and I had left it all to her. She and Jasper had departed so unexpectedly and quickly that I hadn't even acquired the cell phone she suggested, or the e-mail address.

"I must confess, I am behind in these matters," I told Jane. "They seem to me miraculous. I am still awed by radio."

Perhaps the admission endeared me to Jane. She granted me the first smile I had observed from her that I thought genuine.

"Tomorrow let me buy you a phone. Do you have a laptop? Bella, you need _connectivity_." Interestingly, the smile she gave me reversed our positions and made her the older and wiser and me the younger, as she imparted this vital knowledge to me. Then endearingly, her expression became impish and inclusive, and for the first time, despite my lingering horror and sorrow at what I saw as her emotional destitution, I liked her.

Of course, neither she nor I needed to retire that night for sleep, but I had already ascertained that while drinking, dancing, and sex-for-sale establishments in this city remained open for twenty-four hours and seven days a week of transactions, other enterprises did not. We couldn't go shopping, and we couldn't loiter around. And Jane had Edward to return to. I had no idea how she passed the time when he slept, but I recalled vividly and fondly what I had done while Al-ys, My Heart, slumbered in her human state of dreaming and regeneration. I simply watched her, loving every rise and fall of her chest, enthralled by every flutter of her lashes. Each breath was to me both miracle and thief. They all proclaimed her wondrous life, and they all hastened her towards expiry. I had both engendered and rendered impossible My Heart's death. Jane by now intrigued and entranced me, and I wondered just what she had in mind for her Edward's death, if she had even planned it at all. She must have. Al-ys's took me years, but it had always been a certainty.

The next morning, I met with Jane again, she so aloof and pretty in the daylight. Last night's feral and justified creature was well-hidden.

Edward accompanied her, and I could see his attempt at remaining impassive as he greeted me politely. Despite Al-ys's best efforts with my wardrobe, I had failed to conform to the standards of the day, finding them unappealing, and I was well aware I didn't look like other twenty-three year old girls. The denim trousers known as jeans were something I couldn't imagine myself ever wearing, unless I undertook some sort of occupation on a farm, and farmwork didn't figure in my plans. Neither was I interested in skirts above the knee, having so recently come from far more conservative times. Well-cut, fitted clothes were my preference, and these I had by the score. Al-ys had placed many orders with different tailors and outfitters, and I had no need to wear the same outfit twice in six months.

Today my choice had been a three-quarter sleeved, dark blue, belted dress. Edward's appraisal seemed to indicate that he found my appearance pleasing, despite the lack of flesh on display which seemed de rigeur for these times.

"Good morning," he said neutrally but politely. "So, Bella, my sister tells me we are taking you to buy some technology today. What is it you need?"

"Everything, apparently," I responded.

He hailed us a cab, and held the door as Jane and I eased ourselves into the back seat. She was no tomboy, Jane, unlike dear Al-ys, whose every movement took place with a flurry of limbs, fawn-like yet graceful.

I listened studiously in the shops, while Edward spoke easily and knowledgeably to the attendants, and in very little time I had acquired a phone, a laptop, an ipod, a digital camera, and seemingly all manner of things, yet all small enough to fit into one carrier bag.

"Perhaps you would visit me and show me how all these things work?" I asked him, careful to glance at Jane while making the request, and careful to include her in the invitation.

We all returned to my quarters, and I ordered food for him as he undertook explanations of emails, and social networks.

"This is all quite absorbing," I interrupted him after a time, "but I wish to correspond with a friend who is currently overseas. How do I go about that?"

"Do you have an email address for this friend?" he asked, and actually, I did, since Al-ys had squirreled about cleverly here and there during our weeks in this century, and had taught herself knowledge that amounted to a marvel. I replied in the affirmative.

"Well, let me set one up for you. Then you can contact him," Edward told me.

"It's not a him," I answered softly, longingly, and Edward was bending over my shoulder at the keyboard of the macbook - his face close to mine. At my tone he turned questioningly. I could see his pores, and though he must have shaved this morning, I could see the incipient bristles of his upper lip and his jaw, awaiting the hour later in the day when they would break the surface. I transferred my gaze to his irises, and his pupils showed the tiniest of dilations.

"Ah - you need to give yourself a name," he informed me, and I thought I detected a moment's hesitation in his voice, with a slight gruffness. No matter. "And you'll need a password that you won't forget," he continued.

What little I had in the way of memory of my distant past informed me that in those far off days I had only one name, but in modern times two names, those being a first and a last, are required for formal identification purposes. I had a while ago assumed a surname that I thought fitting. It was a single word that contained the idea of a transformation, and I had certainly been transformed. It was the name of an old creature, actually far older than I, and one that symbolized beauty. However, humans underestimated it at their peril. Snow-white and elegant, this creature was also unpredictable and could be dangerous.

"My name is Bel'aa Swan," I told him.

He created an account for me, and the password I typed carefully in was something engraved permanently on my mind, though he told me not to divulge it to him.

"Now, you can contact your friend," he said, and what he showed me seemed easier and less complicated than I'd anticipated.

One of the many advantages of vampirism is quick learning, and despite no previous experience with a keyboard, I had memorized the positions of the keys in moments, and the neural memory transmitted itself to my fingertips in the time it took to snap a photograph. With Edward there hovering I was unwilling to compose a lengthy missive to Al-ys, but I put together a few lines.

_How is the world you are wandering, my Heart? _

_The skies that preside, the lands that abide? _

_How is the air that whispers across your cheek, kissing you in the gentlest of caresses as I long to do? _

_Is there music, is there song, is there beauty where you are? _

_Please tell me you are happy, for you know all I truly desire for you is happiness. _

_Your Jasper - is he all you wished for? Longed for? _

_I hope with everything there is in me that he is. _

_I could not bear to think of you unhappy, and to have you far from me. _

_You know utterly, my Heart, that if you call I will be there._

Edward showed me how to send the message, and off it went, winging across the miles to who knew where? because I had no idea where Al-ys might be.

A glance across the room showed me that Jane had become engrossed in the television, and I eased myself back a few inches from Edward.

"So - are you coming to Europe?" I asked him.

He extended his long legs out in front of himself, crossing them at the ankle, looking entirely comfortable.

"It has long been a dream of mine to visit Europe," he admitted. "Jane mentioned your offer to me this morning. Of course I am interested. I have to fulfill my contractual obligations, and then - wild horses wouldn't stop me. Apparently you know music teachers - ?"

"Yes. The very best. The sublime, the divine, elevated above all others. But Edward, they're not the sort of teachers whose names you can put on your resume."

He leaned forward, elbows on his knees now, and regarding me steadily.

"What are you saying?"

"Come outside. The view from my balcony is particularly fine."

I put a hand through his elbow and led him through the enormous glass doors which overlooked the river. If she could be bothered, Jane could hear us, but I wasn't telling him anything secret or indecorous anyway.

Once outside, Edward lit a cigarette, and their odor to me is a peculiar combination of offensive and alluring. The way he screwed his eyes up and drew his brows together as he drew on it was seductive, if unintentionally, and the way his lips encircled the filter tip was mesmerizing. He exhaled the toxic cloud, but really, with a mentor like Jane hovering over him like a helicopter, he need never have any fear of toxicity. A single shot of her venom would mean nothing could ever poison him.

"You know what I am," I said simply.

"You are what Jane is," he answered.

"I am, but I don't know how much you know about her," I replied.

The city spread below us, the river our doorstep, its many bridges criss-crossing back and forth, its inhabitants busy as ants, with fortunes being made and lost, and hearts broken and won while Edward finished his cigarette before speaking to me again.

"Not very much. However, I know absolutely nothing about_ you_," he said.

Well, well. Had Jane fallen for the talent, the beauty, or the breathtaking confidence? Or all three?

"That doesn't matter. I confess it is Jane I have taken particular interest in, and I wish to acquaint her with an Italian friend of mine. However, should you choose to accompany us you will not go unoccupied. Whatever tradition your tastes lie in, I am sure I can find you an inspirational tutor from that period to study under."

"You mean a tutor who _specializes_ in that period," he corrected.

"No, Edward. You've said you know what I am. I mean a tutor_ from_ that period."

He snorted, disbelievingly. "Someone two hundred and eighty years old?" he asked.

So Jane, supping from his neck or wrist, or wherever she bit him - and I refused to entertain the idea that he would allow her to take blood from him in the same place I normally bit men - hadn't told him much at all.

"Yes, Edward. I will be taking you to the City Of Life. There are some very old people there, though they look no different to you or I."

He considered this for a while, before looking to me again. "I see I shall have a few questions. Maybe you'll answer them. And meanwhile, who is your companion? Who will be traveling with us?" he enquired.

"I have no companion," I answered. "What do you mean?"

"If you're what Jane is, you must have the same requirements. Who - _provides_ for you?"

"No-one. I hunt as and when I need to. As Jane does," I said, patiently.

"Hunt?" he asked, appearing confused.

I nodded. "You know what we are," I repeated, again.

He had been lazing with his hip against the railing, sideways on to the river down below and the rest of the city across it. Now he stood upright abruptly and strode past me.

"Jane?" his voice asked, sharply. "_Jane_? What does Bella mean when she says _hunt_?"

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	7. Chapter 7

This is sure turning out to be a long one shot. js

**Long I Lay In The Ground**

**Chapter 7**

The city's Museum of Ancient History is, contrarily, housed in a modern building. Hard planes and angles define it, shiny glass clads it and exposed steel girders lift the roof skywards. It is stark and imposing, and splits popular opinion just as it cleaves its own rude place amongst the older, softer, less brash architecture of its neighbors.

I have decided now that I am in love with these times, and I love the angularity and asymmetry of this arrogant structure which in the scheme of things, has only been here for an instant. Classicists bound by a Golden Mean could never have conceived it, though Daedalus would have had the scope. My last evening in the city will be spent here, immersed in antiquity until the doors close at ten o'clock.

Tomorrow morning I have a plane to catch. Between the museum's closure, and my appointed time of departure for the airport, I will make my farewells to the city, visiting my favorite haunts, and walking the night away. And I will need to slake my thirst.

Great heavy wooden doors at the Museum's entrance admit me this final time, and the scent of aged things is all around, soothing and contrasting with outside. Here, pollution has no presence. Carbon dioxide fumes are not permitted air space, neither are odors of trash in the street, or mingled cuisine signature aromas from the splendid mix of restaurants. Here is a haven of hushed voices, occasional staccato footsteps sending reverberations bouncing from the walls and high ceilings, and the greatest peace this city can furnish.

You are offered guides when you come in - not actual people to take you around, but devices that play recorded voices explaining what you are looking at, and little earbuds so that visitors can have the information input directly, without it being broadcast to those who might find it an intrusion.

I elect not to be fed the information, as I want to take in what my senses tell me. Though I don't recognize all the items in here, the un-knowing sits easily with me. I have always been more interested in knowledge that is not reliant on facts and measurements and details. Wandering at my leisure without following prescribed steps is by far preferable to me than what is called the "Virtual Tour".

And of course, I don't tire. I could easily spend hours walking slowly from exhibit to exhibit without having to sit or rest. Particular things capture my imagination though, and if there is an empty seat situated in proximity to something I wish to spend time by, I take it.

I have spent many evenings in this fashion. Galleries and museums are as temples to me - places of worship. Humanity has carved and painted its dreams, and I find myself in near-endless reveries over them. Old bones do not warrant my attention, but anything hand-made, or later, industrially made, I am keen to explore. I wish we were allowed to touch - but everywhere there are signs warning the public against it. Some artifacts are too fragile, and most are vulnerable to damage that can be caused by oils and acids in human skin. I would almost hold up my fingers for analysis, let a team of curators cut off the whorls of my pads and run them through laboratory testing to prove my touch is more sterile than a newly unwrapped latex glove, just to feel the vibrations that would still be present on an object created five hundred, or one thousand, or fifteen hundred years ago. The vibrations that would tell me of past hands and long-ago touches. I am a kinesthete, but here my hands are bound to my sides as securely by rules as they would be by chains or rope. More securely in fact, as I could snap physical bindings.

Opening hours are nearing their end, and I am one of the last to leave. The doors close behind me and outside the building I turn back to face it, inclining my head in thanks.

I am not alone. Next to me on the pavement is a man I had observed inside. He had been in some of the same rooms as me but apart from noticing him, I had spared him no thought. Now he smiles.

"Excuse me," he says casually. "Didn't I just see you in Byzantium?"

I could shrug and walk past, or I could respond. On a whim, I choose the latter. "Yes, I was there for a while."

"And then somewhere along the Euphrates?"

I offer the suggestion of a return smile.

"There, too," I acknowledge.

"So - you're a history buff?" he persists.

It isn't casual, he is trying to start a conversation. Perhaps I need to look no further for tonight's repast. But I don't know yet how to play him, and I will need to contrive to get him to come with me to somewhere secluded.

"Not as such," I answer slowly, as if I'm considering. "It's more that I go into the museum to escape for a while. Out here - " I gesture airily, "is so accelerated, so _fast_. In there, there's a feeling of suspension."

I await his response, knowing if I get anything wrong I'll simply change my approach. He's already interested and I don't want him to lose that interest.

But I haven't gotten anything wrong. "I know what you mean," he nods. "Look, this is going to sound very forward of me, but we're right outside a cafe. May I buy you a coffee?"

I consider again. He has a lovely voice, and he's tall. I avoid staring directly at him, but I've seen high cheekbones and full lips. Straight dark brows, thick shortish hair haloed in the glow from the streetlight behind him. Perhaps it's a shame that I only take the handsome ones, because it means they're not passing their genes on. But then I feed infrequently, really, and I don't touch women. The thousands and thousands of beautiful girls worldwide can have beautiful babies with none of my interference. The world's supply of handsome men is under a negligible threat of diminishment.

"Coffee would be nice," I respond.

"Good. Shall we?"

We don't swap names. I don't know why he doesn't tell me his or ask for mine, until it occurs to me that perhaps he is married, and looking for a dalliance. Not single, as I had assumed, and looking for a girlfriend. I wouldn't want to leave a child half-orphaned, so I'll need to devise an artful way of asking. Coming straight out with it would be crude.

Coffee is tolerable to me, but only just. I can't retch anyway, and I am adept at masking expressions. I almost choke on the foul concoction, while paying attention to him and cloaking my discomfort.

"Would you mind getting me a paper napkin?" I ask eventually, and when he is gone from the table I pour half the cupful into the nearest pot plant.

"So - Friday night and you're visiting a museum - " he says, trailing off.

"As are you," I point out.

"Stop me if I'm being too personal, but why don't you have a date?"

"I recently came out of a long relationship. This seems to be a good opportunity to evaluate a few things."

"Mm-hmm. Like world history."

"Precisely."

"Have you drawn any conclusions?"

"All empires eventually fall."

"The historical record certainly bears testament to that. Why do you think it is?"

"Sometimes it's due to the triumph of a greater power. Other times it's the price of folly and over-reach. Sometimes it's arbitrary."

"Do you think the collapse of empire is an inevitable absolute?"

Again, he's not being casual. If he's looking for someone to cheat on his wife with, he doesn't need to get into the theory of Imperialism and its consequences and aftermath. Maybe this is how he flirts. Or seduces. He doesn't need to seduce me, since my acceptance is already a given. If it could be called acceptance.

"I'm not sure. Humanity is an empire. Life itself could be said to be an empire. Humanity has colonized all of earth's surface and exists in an uneasy relationship with the environment, as well as atmospheric and planetary forces. If humanity falls, either due to environmental failure, or self-destruction, we won't know about it. If the light of life itself dies out, we won't know that either."

He leans forward. "That's very fatalistic. Are you one of these people who support sending bacteria on interstellar trips to attempt the introduction of life to other solar systems?"

"I hardly think it matters."

He shakes his head then with a rueful grin and says, "This is a hell of an introductory conversation. I'm happy to continue it, but not on an empty stomach. I'm forgetting my manners - I haven't even offered to get you something to eat."

No, but you will. "I'm not hungry."

"I am. You don't have to rush off, do you? I don't have anywhere else I have to be, and this is - well - I'm enjoying your company."

I'm enjoying his, too, as well as the view, and the talking. It's surprisingly stimulating. My usual methods of attracting victims haven't involved much more than glances and murmurs, and once they're in striking distance, arm-stroking and neck-kissing. My gossamer thread has them stuck by then, not realizing they're caught, and in deadly peril. They do suspect they're in for something, and I give them all the signals, subtle and unsubtle, that pleasure awaits, the like of which they've never known before and will never know again. It's too early for that with this one. The way we're talking to one another gives no indication that either of us has seduction as a motive.

"I don't have to go anywhere," I admit candidly, and he smiles and peruses a menu, ordering steak, rare. An appetite for blood?

If I were a normal girl, I probably wouldn't be doing this - taking a perfect stranger up on his offer of coffee, and sitting across a table from him as the night grows later. Or would I? I don't know. While his agenda is unclear, I'm reasonably confident he's not a psycho killer. It takes one to know one. He seems intense until he smiles, and then his face is clear and untroubled. If I were a normal girl, I think I would trust him.

"So, what else? Tell me something," he says easily, throwing the floor wide open.

"For the last few months I've watched a movie every day. Frequently more than one. I - somehow missed out on seeing films for years, and now I'm making up for lost time."

"Do you have a favorite genre?"

"I am impressed by everything. I couldn't begin to understand the process - the initial idea, the nurturing of it into a whole story, the writing of that story in a format that will translate to the visual, the conceptualization, the search for locations and cast, the plotting of scenes, the shooting of it all, the editing of it into something that reflects the director's intentions - _everything_. It all awes me."

He nods, expectant, and I continue. "I like foreign language films especially, as even when they're fantastical they have such a ring of authenticity. The actors don't appear as though they're acting. I like science fiction, when you can believe that anything is possible. Comedies challenge me, though. My Heart - the partner I used to live with - always found me somewhat serious. It's true I don't laugh a lot."

My companion shrugs. "Does that bother you?"

"It didn't until it was said."

"I'm sure it was an observation and not a criticism."

"That is probably the case, but still I found I didn't quite like to be considered humorless."

"Certainly gravity is one thing and levity quite another."

Why on earth I should be being honest and telling him something personal was beyond my understanding. Many ages ago people laughed for different reasons than they do now. Back then, humor was visually-based, or bawdy. Over generations, changes took place and life became more complicated as people became more sophisticated, and vice-versa. While those things still caused hilarity, a new humor was emerging that was word-based, and intellectual. The parlance of the day referred to it as wit. Since my last awakening with Al-ys, I had discovered wit was even more prevalent, though there were vastly differing degrees of it. I loved to hear verbal cleverness and was impressed by its exponents, but seemed to lag well behind my Heart in being able to make witty declarations.

Having said that, I am fairly sure my companion has said something mildly funny. Not laughable, but an example of something I'd heard of called wordplay. My vocabulary is extensive, and I decide to experiment, having nothing to lose.

"And brevity is something else again."

I am rewarded. "In fact, the soul of wit," he says, raising an eyebrow. "What about depravity?"

"To be depraved is misbehaved."

I am rewarded again. He snorts a laugh. "That sounded faintly saintly."

My lips stretch, baring my teeth. It may have been a hundred years since I last smiled. I'm only halfway there, but he responds to me, and his grin takes over his whole face. It's glorious. I beam back, surprising myself.

"You have an infectious condition," I tell him. "A contagious smile."

"If you had a humor deficit, it's just been proven reversible," he answers, and we maintain eye contact. I could look at him without blinking for a year, but apropos of nothing I recall there is a human personality disorder called Aspergers Syndrome where people behave in ways considered socially inappropriate, and staring is one of them. I look away.

Relief floods me when someone sits at a piano I hadn't even noticed in the corner by the bar, and starts playing. My nameless comrade and I talk about music, and it's desultory now. Do you like - ? Have you heard of - ? I've had a crash course thanks to multimedia, and I haven't heard of half the artists he mentions, which by the same token means I _have_ heard of half of them. The voices and material that have made an impression on me are names he knows - Nina Simone, Nick Drake, Jeff Buckley. He likes them. Leonard Cohen.

"_Let me see your beauty when the witnesses are gone_," he says softly. "_Let me see you moving like they do in Babylon_."

He doesn't know what he's asking.

By now it's after midnight, and I decide the time has come. "I think it's getting late," I say, regretfully. "I really should go."

He looks regretful, too. "Where do you live? Could we share a cab?"

"Oh, I'm just across the river from here. It's only a fifteen minute walk. I don't need a cab."

"You shouldn't walk by yourself at this time of night. I'll see you home."

And thus we pretend we've discussed it, although I knew he'd be walking me home, and he must have already known it, too. There is a park on the other side of the river, with plenty of quiet and private spots. It's reknowned as a beat where gay men meet for sex. Teenagers go there for illicit hook-ups. Presumably married people who are so desperate for extra-marital thrills that they will engage in plein-air after-hours entertainment make use of it as well. He may think this constitutes an offer, but he doesn't look smug or anticipatory as we leave the cafe.

The lights over the bridge, and the lights of the city and their reflections in the water are frequently described in newspaper and magazine articles as romantic. Kissing scenes from popular films have been shot here. He and I traverse the span with no mention of any of this, and no pause to bask in it.

Beyond us lies the park, and through the park, and a couple of streets beyond is where I have been accommodated. I just need to get him halfway there. Tonight I watched his pulse beat at the base of his throat. I heard him, and smelt him. Regardless of size, human males have about twelve pints of blood and I've been dizzy with the thought of his. He's big and strong and healthy and my getting hold of him is only minutes away.

We take one of the paths and we don't speak, though leaves whisper overhead and the sound of traffic, muffled by walls and foliage, reaches us from a distance.

"Could we - just sit down a while?" he asks suddenly, breaking the silence, and this is perfect. Because the park was seemingly designed by some town planning deviant to enable clandestine encounters, most of the seats are off the main thoroughfares, and located discreetly. He follows my lead without hesitation, and we find a bench.

"You're not what I expected," he says straightaway. "I knew I was going to speak to you. I left the museum before you and waited for you outside - have you realized that? I don't know what I thought you'd be like - but whatever it was, you're different."

"So are you," I murmur, honestly, and my hand is on his knee. He doesn't take any notice until I slide it up his thigh.

"Wait," he says, but I don't. I can't. My hand is at the front of his pants, and I feel what is lying there, soft and unawake.

"What are you doing?"

It's obvious what I'm doing. Why would he even ask? Life stirs beneath my questing fingers, and surges. The little soft thing lengthens as it fills. He groans and slings an arm around my shoulder, not knowing if he wants to push me away or pull me closer. Neither option wins out, and he groans again. I'm stroking him carefully through the denim of his jeans, but with enough pressure to get results. Soon he'll be uncomfortable, so I bring up my other hand and start undoing his belt.

"Hey," he mutters, and puts both his hands over both of mine. "Stop."

I do, though my hands stay where they are. He is hardening, I can feel the pulsing as the blood flows in.

"Please," I say.

"Why?" he counters. "You don't know my name. You haven't even kissed me."

"Do those things have to happen?" I ask.

"With you, for me - yes they do," he answers.

"This isn't a love story," I say, but I say it without conviction.

"It could be," he replies.

.

.

.

Was anybody expecting that?

And my Hearts, all of you - though I wouldn't implore you for reviews, may I most humbly mention that ... oh, never mind. Forget it. No, really. Mumble. Well, all right - let's see, 20 reviews for nearly 20,000 words. Youdothemath I'lldothespelling js


	8. Chapter 8

And

**Long I Lay In The Ground**

**Chapter 8**

Jane and Edward, Edward in Jane, a match made in hell. The attitudes their bodies assume now when facing each other tell conflicting stories of frustration, despair, desire unmet and unreturned, hope countered by need - all of it dysfunctional. Poor Jane doesn't want to want him, but she's helpless. As for Edward, I don't understand him yet.

But his shoulders slump, as before he has even repeated his question, her face gives him some sort of response.

"You drink from other people? Not just me?"

So Jane has deceived him entirely as to her nature. He hasn't grasped the truth yet, as he must have had no reason to ever suspect it. And what is this reaction of his? He couldn't possibly be jealous?

"Of course I do. What I take from you would barely keep a bat alive. It's not even subsistence level," she says, patronizingly.

"You've never told me that. But what happens to these others? You and I have an agreement. Do you have other regulars and other agreements? Are you traipsing up and down the country persuading people to let you slit their wrists and take a few mouthfuls, and then extracting a promise that they won't tell anyone? Are you declaring fidelity to them, and that you'll return?"

"No, that's not what happens."

I have lived in this age long enough to know that what was commonplace in ages past is unknown now. To Edward this is new and horrific.

"Well, why did Bella specifically use the word _hunt_? That implies predation, and capture. It implies force...and non-consent..." His voice slows, and dread creeps into it.

"Jane - ?" He crosses to her and takes her by the upper arms. "What happens? What happens to these others - ?"

"They're where I left them. And their tongues are stilled."

Edward utters a small, "no," and stumbles away from her, his face ashen. He catches a glimpse of me in the open doorway to the balcony, and says, "What does she mean, _stilled_?"

He already knows the answer and I don't need to provide it.

"And - you? _You_?" he asks.

Within moments he has flung himself through the hall, and to the bathroom. The sound of his retching fills the silent air.

"Why didn't you tell him?" I say to Jane, but it's obvious why. Only a person who is perverted, amoral, or completely disconnected could live with the knowledge of what Jane does to survive, and Edward is none of these things.

He returns, wiping his mouth, and begins a verbal attack. Monstrous, devious, appalling, murderous, disgusting, loathsome, vile - and many, many more negative adjectives are hurled at Jane, who remains aloof and icy throughout his tirade. Edward is pacing the room, incandescent with bewilderment and pain, hands raking through his hair as he shouts.

When his arsenal has seemingly run out, Jane starts on him. She makes no attempt at appeasement whatsoever. She says he has practiced selective naivety, never questioning her disappearances. Never stopping to wonder at how such a small volume as she took from him, and at such infrequent intervals, could be sustaining her. She says he is opportunistic and self-interested, accepting the benefits she brought to him - the way she has been managing his career over the phone, making bookings, liaising with agents, putting together press-kits and media material, persuading influential people to listen to him. And surely he is aware that his playing has improved beyond measure since they entered into their arrangement? Has he honestly never, ever wondered why that should be? It is because the miniscule amount of saliva she transmits to him through his bloodstream as she drinks has conferred a superior ability. He is not such a fool as to have not recognized this, but he is dishonest with himself for not acknowledging it.

The argument rages on.

At one point I decide I will leave them to it, and I make for the door.

"Where do you think you're going?" Edward rails at me. "Out to snack on a passerby? No, you don't!"

Apparently, he thinks he can stop me. Perhaps Jane, in keeping him in the dark the way she has, has also neglected to mention that our kind, hers and mine, could tear him apart with our bare hands. If he thinks he is stronger than I am, I'm not going to disprove it, because to disprove it would potentially hurt him. I sit as he continues to pace.

Then Edward's diatribe turns to rights, and states that murder is a violation of people's rights. Jane says if rights are automatic simply by virtue of existence, she and I have the same rights as everyone else. We have the right to keep ourselves alive by feeding. A cat has the right to kill a bird or a mouse because that is what its system is designed to ingest, and that is what will fulfill its nutritional requirements - ergo, a vampire has the right to blood. She points out that he enjoys steak. He takes cream in his coffee, and dairy products are only available because of the ongoing mass slaughter worldwide of day-old calves. Animals die daily in very great numbers for the rapacious demands of humans.

"And leather, Edward? Your shoes, your belt? Animals are slaughtered for far more than to provide humans with sustenance. What about the trade in animal parts for medicines? What about animal testing for every product used around homes, or used as cosmetics? You're a smoker, Edward. How many creatures were secured into harness and mask and forced to smoke cigarettes until it killed them so tobacco companies could grow rich and you could risk cancer?"

"There is a difference," Edward states coldly, and now Jane's eyes are flashing.

"Go live in a cave then, you ignorant boy. Human society is entirely reliant on death for its life. You're sanctimonious and a hypocrite. Did you have all these concerns when you thought your kind were at the top of the food chain? Did you question your entitlements then? Now you find there's something above _you_. Humans have long considered themselves the most important life-forms. Well, what makes you so special and privileged, and worthy of plundering all earth's resources? And what grants you the justification to sit in such disapproving judgement on me? _Everything_ eats to live. Do you vilify the baleen whale for consuming plankton? Everything feeds on a lower order. _So do I_. But Edward, I'm not going to harvest your skin to make myself a wallet, or feed you only on milk to make your flesh sweeter and whiter, or make powder from your dried organs to boost my libido."

Edward is finally speechless, but Jane is not.

"And another thing. If you're so opposed to the killing of humans - what are you _personally_ doing about it? How many wars have you stopped? How many armaments factories have you closed down? Which terrorist factions do you negotiate with? I take about half a dozen lives a year. Humans are moralistic, ostensibly law-bound, and answerable to their Gods - but how many lives do self-righteous humans take?"

"Stop," Edward says, shaking his head. "I can't talk to you any more. I can't listen to your twisted arguments. Get out of here."

He doesn't care that he has no authority to order Jane to leave my apartment. His tone is final.

Standing up, Jane jeers at him.

"Fine. I'll get on with the unforgivable reaping and culling and you go back to being what you _were_ before I made you what you _are_."

The door slams behind her.

Exhausted now, Edward turns back to me. I have found his courage and conviction impressive. Disheveled as he is, having almost pulled hard enough on his hair to have removed handfuls of it, he is disarmingly handsome. But I can see it's more than looks, and more than talent that attracts Jane so much to him. He has a formidable strength of character as well.

"Bella - I have no idea where Jane will go now, but I can't go back to our apartment. I'll make myself alternative arrangements of course, just as soon as I'm able, but may I stay here for a night? Assuming you won't eat me in my sleep, of course," he sighs.

"I have a spare room. You are most welcome to use it. I'm very sorry this has all come as such a shock to you. I confess, it never occurred to me that you wouldn't know."

He doesn't deign to reply, merely sets his jaw then turns his head away. I show him to the second bedroom - Al-ys's haven.

I had done nothing to the room when my Heart left, and signs of her occupation are still everywhere. The hotel staff had made up the bed with clean sheets, but other than that, the room sings of her. Trinkets, jewelery, magazines, shoes, clothes, books - all sorts of paraphernalia that my dear love had espied and fancied lie about in the colorful profusion of disarray that characterizes her. I come in here often to brood, and to remember.

Looking about, Edward is clearly surprised. There is barely a square inch of surface area that isn't a token of my Heart.

"You _do_ have a companion," he says, slowly.

"Not a companion. Not in way you used the word. More like - a sister? A beloved sister?" I answer, unsure how I can describe what Al-ys is to me.

"Where is she?"

"She fell in love with someone and they have gone to discover each other on their own."

He wanders idly, picking up this and that. A ribbon, a bracelet. My Heart had been a sombre thing when first we met, the weight of her alleged insanity far too heavy for her little shoulders. She hadn't been much older than Jane. Time, and my indulgence, had revealed the natural tendency towards joy that is evidenced here. Practical, determined and clever, my Heart had both led and followed me, each of us Mistress and Slave to one another in our differing ways. She is also effervescent and playful. Amongst this pretty jumble I still feel her essence.

"They are _vampires_?" His detestation of the word and its object is in his enunciation.

"Now, yes. But Al-ys already was, Jasper wasn't - he was human. They fell in love with one another at first sight."

His glance flies to my face. "Wait - a vampire and a human fell in love? Isn't that counter-intuitive?"

"Ah - " I begin, but he hasn't finished.

"And what do you mean - they're both vampires now? Are you telling me that vampires can be _created_? What nightmare process is that done by? And why on earth would he consent to it?"

"He didn't consent. She chose him. He didn't know what she was when he fell in love with her. I changed him for her, and afterwards - he thanked me."

"You? He was an ordinary man, and you turned him into a blood-drinking murderous demon?"

To tell the truth, Jasper will not hunger for months because he has Al-ys, but once their honeymoon is over he will be just as the rest of us, and will need to feed. Edward is already very distressed, and affirming his accusation is hardly going to help.

"Can I order you anything?" I say instead.

"A negation of this horror," he mutters.

Sensing his need now for privacy and reflection, I leave him, after having provided a fresh towel and a toothbrush.

The night is young, and I return to the main room, where beyond the balcony, the city lights twinkle. Out there is laughter and forgetting - in here Jane and Edward's harsh words still hang in the air, heavy and embittered. But I lack the will to escape from under their oppressive atmosphere. Usually I enjoy walking outside amongst the pulses and heartbeats, vastly preferring their warm, wet sloshing to any of the sanitized, anodyne, vulgarity of television. Tonight all I want is my Al-ys, who is gone from me and lost, for how long, I do not know. I feel Jane's loneliness as a mirror of my own, and yet greater, and I despair for the poor lost creature that she is. I too have loved a human, but mine had accepted me without this recrimination and blame and recoil. We had waited a few years for her to be sure, and for her to be through her childhood, and then she had undergone the transformation willingly. Al-ys and I had been a need and a compulsion for one another. Was that how it had been for Jane with Edward? I wasn't rejected though, just temporarily deserted. Al-ys and I were united forever, of this I was sure. Her miraculous heart was far bigger inside than out; its passages and chambers could house me fully within, and yet expand to fit this new and true love - the boy-man Jasper.

I ponder on these things as Edward sleeps, and envy him the respite.

Suddenly though, my eye is caught by a tiny icon in the screen of the open laptop, lying on my desk. There is a symbol of an envelope that hadn't been there before.

Clicking the mouse over what you want to look at makes things open or enlarge, Edward had told me. I move the arrow and click.

And_ oh_! There is a message from my Heart.

_I wander two worlds at once, one is with you and I hold it dear in my memory, real and close_

_The other is without you, yet filled with discovery and warmth, truth and pleasure. I had no lack of anything while at your side, reveling in plentitude and contentment, and adoration. You and I are twinned souls, I have no doubt about it. But Mistress! Jasper's love is the rushing spring, the thrill, the ease, the climb and the fall. It is the completion of me_

_We travel fast, he and I. His energy matches mine. We cover such terrain - mountains, deserts, rivers. We fly through towns and cities, or we stop and spend hours on a single street. He likes people. He will stop to play backgammon with an old man on the sidewalk, he will pick up a guitar in a cafe and sing songs of the heartbreak he need never fear. He chuckles at babies and wants to break into churches and attend weddings, that people's flowing happiness may be accentuated by our own. It's catching, he says_

_My Bella, I know a love eternal and true waits for you. Jasper and I both think he is in the city you and I were living in. How strange, yet how fitting that your mate and mine should be within a matter of miles of each other!_

_I am, always, your adoring Al-ys_

_._

_._

_._

_._

I am, always, your adoring Syrrah


	9. Chapter 9

**Long I Lay In The Ground**

**Chapter 9**

I step outside, over looking the city. Al-ys's words have burned a typeset image over my field of vision, yet my ears still ring with what has so recently been said in these rooms.

Velvet night with her caress and promise call to me, whispering all sorts of enticements through the violet air as I dwell in a fugue, and eventually the fleeting delights she offers win out over the sure knowledge that my own careworn company will drive me to despair. I want what I cannot have - the solace of my Al-ys - and I've been stricken by the plight of Edward and Jane. I teeter on the verge of misery, my toes already curling over the edge.

Walking, walking, I walk until the dawn chorus, worrying where Jane might be. The fact that she can take care of herself doesn't mean that she can't get into trouble, and all three of us were distressed by last night's argument. Edward is safe in my hotel room, I am safe in my wandering, but is a fourteen year-old girl with a savage streak and a heart of darkness safe anywhere?

Back on my balcony I watch the lightening of the sky, moved almost to tears as I always am at the softness of lavender and pink.

A haggard Edward greets me at ten o'clock, clearly having slept in his clothes. Being rumpled and unshaven makes him even more handsome, in a bohemian, unkempt way.

I offer breakfast.

"I don't want to take anything from you," he states flatly.

"Oh, don't be precious. You need to eat. What will it cost for eggs and coffee? Twenty dollars? Pay for it yourself, if you must."

"I will. Is Jane here?"

"No, she didn't come back, and I haven't heard from her."

He sighs, paces, fidgets.

"Do you want to hear the story? Of Jane and me? I feel like telling it," he says.

Yes, I certainly do want to hear how this unlikely partnership had come about. After ringing down for his breakfast, I sit opposite him at the wrought iron outdoor setting on the balcony. He's quiet for so long the food arrives before he has spoken.

He thanks me, though he barely picks at it. Pouring himself coffee from the plunger, he begins.

"I was the only child of a lawyer father, and a mother who did charity work in the community. My parents wanted me to be cultured, and enrolled me in piano lessons when I was five. To everybody's surprise, my teacher said that I showed a great deal of promise, and could possibly have a future in music. The lessons continued, and I was expected to practice an hour a day, which rose to two hours as I got older. I never questioned it, because without siblings there was nobody to play with and nobody to distract me. After school, once my homework was done, I played piano until dinner time. After dinner, I played until bedtime. I became somewhat reclusive, as you can imagine, but I never missed the company of others because there was no space in my life for anybody. Music was my company, and my increasing level of skill was its own reward.

"When I was seventeen, both my parents died, and I barely noticed. I could say that I immersed myself in music to cope with their loss, but that's not the case. I was already immersed. My contact with my parents had for years consisted of all of us passing one another in the hallway as my father rushed to court, and my mother rushed to attend some event or duty that she had volunteered for. I'd become accustomed to spending most of my time alone, and my tutor was responsible for getting me to various performances or exams or whatever. I was aware that other people my age had friends, but I wasn't sure what purpose friends might serve.

"After my parents' death the courts sent me to live with a guardian for a year, until I turned eighteen, and by this time I was playing in public often, at performances organized by my tutor, and earning money. There'd been a reasonable sum from my parents' life insurance as well. My guardian - a distant uncle - was nice enough, but I inherited the apartment I'd always lived in, and following my eighteenth birthday I moved back into it.

"I finished school, having done rather well, and was accepted to a conservatorium. I did well there, too, since I had no outside life. Although it was there I discovered that - oh, never mind."

He stops for more coffee.

"Discovered what?" I ask, wondering.

In the morning light, a small fire of red appears high across his fine cheekbones.

"Apparently, I was considered intriguing by girls because I barely spoke. I barely changed my clothes, or washed my hair either, but somehow I was also deemed attractive. I got quite a bit of female attention, which was all foreign territory to me," he states. "At first I was completely naive, but within months, that naivety was a distant memory. There were more girls than I can remember, and parties and nightclubs, and sex on offer every time I turned around. I didn't actively seek it, but I never declined it, either. Then when I discovered I'd gained a reputation, I didn't understand how it had happened or what to do about it."

_Little boy lost_, I think, and he even looks baffled telling me.

"And Jane?" I prompt softly.

"Yes, Jane," he answers. "I have a piano in my apartment of course, and it's rather a nice one - the best my parents could afford. However, it's an upright, and I needed to practice on a grand. I found a practice studio with a very good piano, and I was going there several nights a week, after college. I became aware there was a girl hanging around, although she didn't speak to me. She just seemed to be listening from outside the building - she was always there when I left. I was a bit concerned about what someone her age was doing hanging around, because I'd be coming out of there at ten or eleven at night, and she was just a kid who should have been at home at that hour, but it was a couple of weeks before either of us spoke. She approached me under the streetlight - this wayward urchin, ethereal and pale - and asked if I'd take her home with me.

"It was the first real look I'd had at her, because she'd hovered in the shadows up until then, and I was saddened at how dirty she was. Her clothes didn't really fit, and they were filthy and even torn. To my shame, I thought she was soliciting. Half of me suspected that she was probably a junkie and a thief, and just plain bad news - the other half figured she was probably homeless and needed help. When I asked her where she lived she said her parents had recently thrown her out, and she begged to come to my apartment and just have a bath. She said she wouldn't bother me any more after that. I said I'd do as she asked, and I added that I didn't want anything from her, in case she thought I was expecting favors in return.

"Back at my place I put her clothes in the washer while she was bathing, and I cooked her a meal and found her a t-shirt to wear while we waited for her things to dry. I also looked up various services and organizations for homeless teens and printed a list out, ready for her to read. I'd scraped together all the cash I had at home, and I planned to offer her my spare room for the night, and see her on her way in the morning.

"But the girl who came out of the bathroom was completely different to the one who'd gone in. She'd seemed so small and afraid when I'd spoken to her at the studio, like a miserable and broken little flightless bird. When she came out of the bathroom, she was the Jane you know now. Her poise was electrifying. Even wearing a man's t-shirt that was ridiculously too big for her, she managed to appear elegant and proud. While I was still trying to get accustomed to the 180 degree turn around in her demeanor, she started to talk about music. She offered a critique of my playing that took my breath away - it was severe to the point of harshness, and yet utterly fair. I was astonished at how well she knew what she was talking about. She flayed me to the bone, really. And then she offered to tutor me.

"Stalling for time, I asked for her qualifications, and of course, she didn't have any. None on paper anyway. The breadth of her knowledge was her qualification. We sat down at my bench, at the piano, and she took me note for note through the piece I'd already been working on that night back at the studio, and for the past several nights. My technique was _vivisected_. As little as an hour later, I already knew I was playing better than I ever had before. Neither of us ate the dinner I'd prepared - we were too busy. Finally at about two am, I told her to stay the night, and I went to bed, my head spinning.

"The next morning I quizzed her, and she wasn't at all forthcoming with information about herself, but she repeated that her parents wouldn't be looking for her. I said I'd find her somewhere to live, and I'd see to it that she got into a school, and I'd keep an eye out so that she never had to be on the street again. She wouldn't give direct answers about any of that, either. She stayed the next night, and the next, with us working together on music for hours and hours again. I'd slipped out and bought her some clothes since her own were in such a state, and I'd gotten a few other things for her as well - a hairbrush, toiletries. I bought cokes for the fridge in case she wanted them, and cookies and icecream. I had no idea about fourteen year old girls.

"I was still attending college, so I was out during the days, but she refused to go to school. I'd run into obstacles anyway, trying to enrol her when I wasn't her legal parent or guardian, so despite my efforts, I couldn't get her in anywhere. She continued to be obstinate about it, and I already had a lot on my plate. I admit I let it slip in view of the fact that I was so busy, and she was already so inexplicably well-educated.

"The next thing I knew she was booking appearances for me, and arranging interviews and reviews, and I became even busier. I should have been more worried about the school side of things, and about tracking down her parents, but it was all such a whirlwind. It was literally weeks before I realized I'd never actually seen her eat. Even then - there were no alarm bells to ring - nothing to tell me anything was amiss other than the fact that I was harboring an abnormally precocious teen who clearly wasn't anorexic because she wasn't losing any weight. I was more worried about what the authorities would do or say if they caught up with her, and caught up with me. After all, she was underage. I never laid a finger on her - but who would believe I was housing a fourteen-year-old girl because of her prodigious knowledge of classical music, and because she'd become both my tutor and my manager?

"Then one night I'd performed somewhere, and Jane had come along. By then I'd bought her suitable clothes. We were speaking to people afterwards, and she introduced herself as my sister. She said she'd been interstate at private school and that our mother and father had wanted her out of the limelight, but that as she and I were one another's only family since our parents' tragic deaths I'd brought her to live with me. It was so smoothly delivered, and so credible that no-one doubted her, and that's how we've been perceived for a couple of years now. No-one has ever even checked. When she acts as my manager it's always over the phone, and she uses another name and changes her accent. It can't go on forever, obviously, this public charade, but I owe so much to her acumen and ambition and skill."

"She owes you too, I'd say. You gave her a home, a name, a purpose, and respectability. You gave her the society she couldn't have had otherwise."

"Oh, don't you think she would have gotten her talons into somebody else? Don't you think she will again? She'll change her hair and her looks and her voice and be someone else's sister," Edward says. "She and I have a shelf life."

"I think you underestimate her regard for you."

"Regard has little to do with it. Her indomitable instinct for self-preservation rates far more highly."

"You sound as though you mind. What is Jane to you?"

"Ah, now we're getting to the crux of it, aren't we? I can't tell you the nights I've lain awake wrestling with the question of what Jane is to me. Aside from the obvious that is - the Svengali to my Trilby O'Ferrall. The absurdity of our situation is not lost on me. And neither is the unconventionality. I haven't yet told you how we came to be embroiled in our unnatural agreement."

He looks around him, swears softly, and apologizes. "My jacket? I need a cigarette," he says, standing up. His jacket is thrown across a chair inside.

"Do you mind?"

Passive smoking poses no threat to me, and I don't find the odor offensive. "Not at all," I reply.

He is silent for the duration of the cigarette, contemplative and inward looking. He pours himself another coffee, though it must be cold by now, and sits awhile with his elbows on his knees and thoughts elsewhere. He looks unreachable.

When he speaks again, it is with harshness.

"She drugged me. The first couple of times, she drugged me. I don't know what it was, but it made me slow and warm and heavy. One night we'd come home from a concert and I'd been received well and I'd had a few drinks. I'm not much of a drinker, but I keep alcohol at home, and I like a whisky now and again. Jane and I were listening to gypsy music, both too wound-up to sleep yet. She brought me a drink and I was light-headed after a few minutes. Another few minutes and I couldn't stand up any more. Jane was cooing, telling me to trust her, telling me she meant me no harm, which didn't make sense. When she took my wrist and brought it to her mouth I thought she wanted to kiss me, and I said no. Kissing someone on the inside of the wrist is an intimate act, and was entirely inappropriate between surrogate siblings, particularly when one of them is so young. But of course, it wasn't a kiss. Or it was - but I felt her teeth, and felt licking and tugging. It was obscene, Bella. I don't have to tell you how sensuous it is to have someone suck your flesh. I took pleasure from it, and I was disgusted with myself. I would have pushed her away, but because of whatever it was she'd dissolved in my drink I lacked the strength. And when I woke the next morning I was lying on the couch with a splitting headache, and no mark whatsoever to indicate that the whole thing hadn't been a dream."

He rubs at his temples, fingertips disappearing into his standing-on-end hair.

"I couldn't bring myself to speak to her about it, because it sounded too surreal. Sister dear, did you slip me some sort of narcotic and then commit a freakish and bizarre assault on my arm? I said nothing, and told myself it hadn't happened, although in my paranoia I started taking massive vitamin supplements. But even though I started a campaign of vigilance, and wouldn't let her bring me any food or drink, she somehow managed to drug me again two weeks later. And this time, biting me she sent a trail of fire coursing up my arm. The next morning I wasn't hungover - there were no ill-effects at all. I felt fine. Again, there was no evidence that she'd done anything to me and I put my good mood down to the vitamins.

"And slowly, over a few days, I became aware of a change. I felt a general lift in my well-being, as though I'd always been just below par before, but now I was better. My energy level increased. I was more focussed, and things seemed to be clearer. It was like there were more hours in the day, and I could work harder. And another thing - my appetite increased. I was eating like a horse. And it wasn't just my appetite for food... My libido had been a demanding presence once I'd discovered women were attracted to me, but it began to get almost unmanageable. I channeled it into piano practice, and gym sessions.

"And best of all, the more practice I did, the more dextrous my hands were. Signals from my brain were getting to my fingers so quickly I felt like a conduit - whatever was in my head set sparks in my hands instantaneously. I was playing better than I ever had in my life. Better than most people ever do, to be honest.

"Putting two and two together, it wasn't hard to see that all this was all a combination of my new vitamin regime and improved health, my hard work, and the lessons from Jane. She'd been giving me insights into music theory I'd never had before. The exercises and scales she set me were more challenging than any I'd had from other tutors. She'd found me pieces to learn that were so obscure they didn't fit into any of the historical periods I was familiar with, and they stretched me. I convinced myself that nothing untoward had ever happened between her and me, and that I'd simply had some weird dreams I should forget about.

"Then one morning I was sipping on a juice I'd poured myself from the fridge, when I detected an odd element in the taste. In a flash I knew I recognized that faint trace of something chemical and wrong. I knew Jane had spiked the drink, and that my suspicions about what she'd been doing were true. Furthermore, she intended to keep doing it.

"When I confronted her, she broke down crying, but she confirmed my accusations. It was a very, very strange conversation, although I suppose it might not seem strange to you, since you suffer from the same condition she does. She explained that she had an affliction - a one-in-a-billion genetic condition so rare that there isn't a name for it. I couldn't believe my ears when she described it to me. Firstly, she admitted she could only ingest human blood, although she only needed small amounts of it. Then she went on to list a range of other aspects to the condition - her immune system was superior to ordinary people's and it was almost impossible for her to get sick. Her senses were so acute as to be more like an animal's than a human's. Her rate of aging was far slower than anybody else's. And incredible as it all was, there was a ring of truth to it. I'd never, ever heard of such a thing, but she made it sound plausible, and she was desperate for me to believe her."

I'm starting to get angry, and as if he can sense a shift in my state of mind Edward looks up. Jane is now seeming to me childish again, where I had been thinking of her as mature. She had been deceitful and manipulative, establishing that Edward was a decent man who would not take advantage of a teenage girl, but she was the one taking advantage. She had blatantly lied to him to enlist his support, pretending that she was a biological phenomenon with an unidentifiable abnormality. He had come to be genuinely fond of her, with no clue that she was so unscrupulous.

"What is it, Bella? Am I making you uncomfortable?" he asks.

"You're not making me uncomfortable, but your tale is. What happened then?" I say.

"Jane said she was sorry for abusing my trust and the generosity I'd shown her, and for violating me the way she had. She thanked me for giving her a roof over her head and clothes, and for allowing her into a musical world she could only ever have hoped to glimpse from a distance, and she said she'd be a burden to me no longer. This was her farewell. I told her not to make any decisions but to sleep on it and we'd talk more in the morning. But by the morning she was gone, and I searched for days. Remembering how she'd been when I met her, a grubby angel with a heart full of opera and holes in her shoes, I couldn't bear to think of her going back to that life. Now that I knew about her peculiar diet I couldn't imagine what she'd had to do in order to eat, but I kept picturing her starving and weak and begging people to help her. In my visions she'd get hurt. Her needs are so unnatural that I couldn't imagine people being willing, and I could all too easily imagine her lying somewhere bruised and beaten after telling someone what she wanted from them."

"Well, I asked a lot of questions in a lot of unsavory places, and eventually I found her. She was so despairing and upset she didn't even argue about coming with me, and I was so grateful to have her back and know she was safe that I was prepared to do what I needed to do to keep her. We entered into our unorthodox arrangement with very few qualms from me, once I understood how little sustenance she required. After a few weeks she informed me that her condition did have a name, and that she hadn't wanted to tell me what it was because of all the associations it had. She said it was called Vampirism and she'd been born with it, and it was nothing to do with the likes of Count Dracula, or any other fictional figures. She could wear crucifixes, attend church, go out in the sunlight, and was perfectly happy to be around garlic, although she couldn't eat it."

I am stunned at the web of half-truths Jane had woven to ensnare this man.

"And Bella, that was what she told me and that was what I believed. I never heard of the "hunting" business until yesterday. She's never spoken of her past, and I've never pressed her about it. I thought it must be too painful for her to revisit. I know she's chronologically older than she looks, but I don't know how old she is. How she has arrived at her musical knowledge I have no idea. But I do know now that though she has the appearance of being defenseless, she is highly resourceful. After yesterday's revelations, I have no fears for her safety or survival at all. I have more fears for society at large. I don't know what to do, Bella. All this time I've seen her as unusual and vulnerable and in need of protection. Now I see that she's very dangerous. As are you."

His splendid green eyes bore into me as he makes this declaration. I can see that he's tired and he's still shocked. Much of what he is relating troubles him, as evinced by changes in the tone and evenness of his voice, but this last sentence is delivered calmly. He is unafraid of me.

There are a couple of possible reasons for this, one being that he trusts me. I like this reason. The other is that amongst all her other omissions, Jane has never told him that she could break him in half. Edward is sitting here honestly thinking that because he is a man, and a big man at that, and I am a woman, and a smallish one, he is much more powerful than I am. I like this reason, too. I like that he is confident of his body. I find Edward compelling and very attractive. It's disturbing.

But there is so much to tell him. Jane has misled him into thinking that she and I are human. He doesn't know we are supernatural. He doesn't know that vampires are real.

"Jane must be stopped. In light of what she was saying, she should be in a hospital for the criminally insane. They'll look after her. They'll give her plasma, or something. I have to find her. Oh, God. Last time she left me, I don't think she really tried to disappear, so it wasn't too difficult to locate her. This time - who knows what's going on in her head? Last time we hadn't fought. But Bella, Jesus Christ - do I have to turn you in, too? Couldn't you just - I don't know - take a twelve step program?"

He stands up and moves towards me. My God, he is fearless. I am seated, and he kneels at my feet.

"Help me find Jane, and we'll get her somewhere she can be looked after, and maybe there'll be a solution for her - something you and I haven't thought of. And Bella, you've said you don't have a provider. Jane hardly took anything from me. I'm big, I'm strong, I'm healthy. I could give a lot more. I could give you enough. Be with me, and I'll give you what you need."

What on earth is he saying? I know what he's saying.

"I won't turn you in. Promise me you'll never harm anybody else, and I'll be yours. You won't have to hunt. We can live together - make our association look like a real relationship. You'll have me whenever you want me. We can even marry if you want. Help me with Jane, and make a vow to me that you won't kill or hurt anyone again. In return I will make a vow to you - whatever you ask of me."

This is unexpected. He is at my feet in supplication, as men used to be, but he is not a supplicant by nature. He is not a supplicant now. He is making me a proposition - his blood, to save lives. But what does he get for his part of this bargain? He gets my pledge that I will not kill. If I could breathe, his nobility and courage would take my breath away.

I could fall for this man.

And a lightning bolt of illumination flashes through my mind - is Edward the one My Heart sees for me?

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End file.
